Are your dollars not stretching as far as they used to? Everyone has different reasons for wanting or needing to cut back.  I thought I’d start sharing some frugal things that we do, in a monthly series, as a way to not only encourage myself to stay on tract, but maybe give someone with similar goals some ideas.

Aaack! I almost forgot to do a HSFH post this month! I’ve been so busy making some changes in my flower beds and vegetable garden so that they will be ready to plant in a few weeks. As you can see by the tree below that’s leafing out – no time to waste!

-I’ve been able to get a good amount of salad greens this month, plus kale and collards from my garden. Some of the collards are already starting to bolt!

-did the usual – cut my husbands hair, made bread, used my crock-pot a lot because I knew I wouldn’t feel like cooking dinner since I’ve had quite a few busy days, used our homemade liquid hand soap (almost out and need to make another batch), hung kitchen towels to dry in the garage – soon we’ll be back to line drying outside.

-used our American Express card rewards points (see this post for explanation) to cash out for quite a few $25 Home Depot cards which  we will use for some upcoming home and garden projects.

-cashed out my Swagbucks & Bing points for Amazon Gift Cards and purchased a few books for my Kindle

- I bought my ham for Easter on mark down after Christmas. Actually I bought a couple (we have a chest freezer) and I’ll buy a few more after they reduce them after Easter. So the main expense for Easter Brunch is already taken care of.

-I went to the Dollar Tree and got a bunch of flower seed packets at 25 cents each because I want to enlarge a few beds specifically my mailbox garden and I don’t want to buy a whole  lot of plants.  So I’m starting some flowers from seed (I’ll also be dividing and moving plants I already have).

-I ran out of pots and made some newspaper pots instead of going out and buying peat pots. So far they’ve held up well. I’ve tried pots made from toilet paper rolls and those always fall apart on me. Here is  the tutorial I used for making newspaper seed pots.

-We got some bags of coffee grounds from Starbucks  (they’re free) and spread those at the base of our blueberry bushes.  Yes, my blueberries are so delicious they need to have their own little house to keep the birds and critters away from them! My blueberries grow really well and I do this a few times a year. Blueberries like  acid soil and coffee grounds are acidic (although some people say the acid is washed out during the brewing process and some people say it isn’t). Either way, my blueberries seem to appreciate an application or two of coffee grounds.

-I’ve been enjoying some concerts (Jack White) and  shows on YouTube. Particularly Carol Klein’s Life In A Cottage Garden. You will LOVE this if you like English Cottage Gardens. Plus it’s always fun to see how experienced gardeners do things. Here’s episode 1

Those are my frugal highlights! What have you been doing to save money this month? Chime in!

Are your dollars not stretching as far as they used to? Everyone has different reasons for wanting or needing to cut back and we are all at different stages in life.  I thought I’d start sharing some frugal things that we do as a way to not only encourage myself to stay on tract, but maybe give someone with similar goals some ideas.

***harvested beans and green peppers despite having 4 freeze warnings (love those row covers I installed). I’ve been bringing my potted basil inside every night to try to keep it going. The rosemary and thyme are still doing well outside. Also got a few radishes, lettuce, & kale leaves. My goal is to be able to harvest something every week.

***made our own pumpkin dog treats from the recipe here.  These are made with rice flour so they are great for dogs with wheat allergies. Some people made these with potato flakes for pets that are grain free. They are so much healthier than store bought ones and they literally just take minutes to mix and you can get as fancy as you want with them or not. I rolled some out like Snausages and on some I used my leaf cookie cutters.

Corey loves them!!  I’m holding one in my hand – look how fixated he is on that treat  He said he especially like the leaf shaped ones because they are tasty AND pretty! You wouldn’t think he notices such things with the way he snatches them out of your hand and gobbles them down…but he obviously is a lover of beautiful things……or maybe pumpkin.   Please check out this news article about treats manufactured in China and the dog deaths that have occurred.  WSBTV.com

***Worked on planning not only meals but snacks too. That way we have some ready to eat snack foods (besides popcorn, fruit & nuts).  That’s why,  although I try to do a lot of scratch cooking, I always have a few boxed mixes on hand. I buy them when they’re on sale. That way anyone can make a sheet cake or muffins or brownies etc. and do it quickly (without any input from me).

***I bought some pretty sunflowers on clearance (post here) and found out flowers are marked down every Friday at my local grocery store.  Sometimes they’re not a good deal because they look like they have maybe a day of life left and sometimes they look really fresh. I only buy them if they’re fresh and will last at least a week. I use my faux flowers freely and without shame if fresh are not available.

***I redeemed gift cards from various programs. I  redeemed a $25 Amex Gift Card through our American Express rewards points (they seem to be on sale right now) to use for Christmas Gifts. Redeemed some Amazon Gift Cards through Swagbucks  and 1 from Bing also for Christmas and redeemed a$25 Applebees  gift card through MyPoints (I only do the emails and surveys so I only average about 1 GC a year from them).

***I decided to not buy any meat for two weeks  and use what I had in my freezer or make meals featuring beans so I could stock up on canned vegetables when Green Giant vegetables were 49 cents a can at Kroger a few weeks ago – did you get any?  As far as I know Green Giant does not use Monsanto GMO  seed so I always buy that brand and stock up when it’s on sale. If you use Cream of soups they were probably the lowest price we’ll  see this year at 69 cents each (you can make your own btw).  I’m hoping to get some ham on clearance after Thanksgiving (we’re not big turkey eaters – once a year is fine for us).

Well those are just some of the highlights of my recent frugal activities. Be sure to read the comments section of this and previous posts  for more frugal tips:

HSFH #4

HSFH #3

HSFH #2

HSFH #1

I love reading all the frugal things everyone does each week so please leave a comment and let me know what you’ve been up to!

Are your dollars not stretching as far as they used to? Everyone has different reasons for wanting or needing to cut back.  I thought I’d start sharing some frugal things that we do as a way to not only encourage myself to stay on tract, but maybe give someone with similar goals some ideas.

One of my favorite things that I did recently was to remake a pair of earrings that were given to me!

I loved the color but they were just way tooo big and heavy for me. So I took them apart and re-made them more my style.

I just used some regular needle nosed pliers that we have and and took some elements off and put some other elements on. This is inspired me to look through my jewelry box to see what other earrings I have that I can re-fashion. Seems when you wear dangly earrings you always lose one dangle or something falls off etc. I’ve seen people make really pretty necklaces and bracelets doing the same thing.

-We continued to make our own bread,tortillas and pizza dough (made some  ”healthy” oatmeal cookies which were nasty so I won’t even bother to give you the recipe).

- We had homemade pizza for family movie night which we all decided is much tastier (and really much more healthy) than take out. I use turkey pepperoni -1/2 white/whole wheat crust- no salt sauce. I always make one that is all veggies – spinach or kale/mushrooms/onion/broccoli fresh tomatoes from the garden, whatever we have on hand. I also froze some pizza dough rolled out so all I have to do is top it for a quick meal.

Dug up and moved plants – divided plants. Bought clearance plants and shrubs to plant in my garden. I need a lot of shrubs to replace all those that Colonial Pipeline cut down so I’ve been waiting for fall clearance to purchase the bulk of them.

-Planted my fall/winter garden .  Continued to harvest kale, tomotoes, peppers, eggplant, swiss chard, green beans & herbs.

Made myself a fall wreath from bits and bobs of fall things I had on hand. Not sure if this is the end result or if I’ll tinker with it a bit more. But wanted to show  you anyway

It used to be blue for spring – I spray painted it a mellow yellow for fall. That’s the fun thing about these grapevine wreaths. You can spray paint them to get a new look! BTW I always always see grapevine wreaths at the thriftstore – so look there if you need one. Also Target has little ones in their dollar section right now.

- We got a Free one year Costco membership through American Express Rewards. Very excited about that as I’ve read that it’s a great place to buy yeast and flour in bulk and since we bake our own bread, tortillas, pretzels,pizza dough, cookies etc from scratch we go through a lot of yeast and flour.  My husband has a Corporate card that he uses for travel that we have linked to our family card for reward points. We don’t use our own card very much but since he travels quite a bit we are able to get a couple of gift cards a month from his work expenses (which he is reimbursed for).

-I was making popcorn on the stove top for snacks, but realized that all that oil I used wasn’t healthy or economical. So I got a hot air popcorn popper for free from Amazon using my Swagbucks gift cards. I’m sure most of you have heard of Swagbucks by now. I do a couple of points programs but Swagbucks is the best one as far as I’m concerned. For all you Kindle Fire users – be sure to download the Swagbucks tv app to your kindle. Much easier and faster to get points than watching Swagbucks TV at the site. I usually get $25 dollars in Amazon GC’s a month and 1 ($5) PayPal.  My referral link if you haven’t signed up yet is here.  I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about how to get started.

Well those are just some of the highlights of my recent frugal activities. Be sure to read the comments section of this and previous posts  for more frugal ideas:

HSFH #2

HSFH #1

I love reading all the frugal things everyone does each week so please leave a comment and let me know what you’ve done!

Are your dollars not stretching as far as they used to? I know mine aren’t! So I thought I’d start sharing some frugal things that we do as a way to encourage myself and maybe give someone in a similar situation some ideas. 

Be sure to check out the comments in Home Sweet Frugal Home # 1 here for more money saving ideas!

Here are a few highlights of some recent frugal things I’ve done:

This may seem like an odd thing to include in a frugal roundup post, but one thing I’ve started doing is wearing an apron while cooking. I have about 5 or 6 cute aprons and used to rarily wear them. Then I’d be making tomato sauce (it always splatters) and I’d get sauce on myself or somehow I would get whatever I’m cooking on myself. I’ve ruined so many perfectly good shirts this way! This should help me save money in my clothing budget!

-cut my husband’s hair (I’ve been doing this for years)

-froze leftovers instead of keeping them in the fridge where I’m bound to forget about them and then had leftover buffet for lunch one day. Wasted very little food this way!

Went to the library and checked out a few dvd’s and books. Also got the last 5 issues of Real Simple for 50 cents at the library (all magazines are 10 cents each at my library). I was quite excited because I never buy this magazine and the cover always looks good.  I think I spent 50 cents too much !!

-saved my orange and lemons peels and added to them to white vinegar to soak for when I need to make some more scented all-purpose cleaner

My amazing daughter made homemade whole wheat tortillas and then used them to make  taquitos. This was all inspired by the fact that I said no to buying a box of taquitos when we went grocery shopping. Her homemade baked version was delicious and much healthier than buying a box of frozen ones. I also froze the tortillas she didn’t use.

She also made homemade crackers. This was her first time for making both! They were also delicious!! She had a bit of trouble trying to roll the cracker dough thin – any suggestions?

-In the garden -I harvested more tomatoes , a handful of green beans, 2 bell peppers and enough leaves of kale and swiss chard everyday to add to our morning smoothies. Also planted some lettuce, spinach and radishes. It’s been too hot for lettuce to grow so I’ve had to buy some all summer, but now that it’s cooling a bit it’s a perfect time to seed some.

I pulled the garlic I planted last fall about a month ago and have been letting it dry in the garage. I think I have enough organic garlic to last a few months

So that’s just a bit of some of the frugal things we’ve been doing lately.

What have you done lately that’s frugal?

I don’t know about you, but I know our dollars are not stretching as far as they used to. Grocery prices seem particularly bad and with the drought in the midwest are only going to get worse. We’ve also had a significant change in our healthcare costs. We used to have no deductible and only had  a co-pay to see a doctor. Since July we’ve had $2500 deductible (which I met when I had a $10,000 CT scan!). Oh did I mention our second car died and we’ve have 3 people using 1 car in a town that doesn’t have mass transit? So we’re also saving for another car. We want to pay cash.

We’ve never been big spenders but we decided at the beginning of summer that we really needed to do better (we still have two more years of college to pay for as well after all).

So I thought I’d start sharing some frugal things that we do as a way to encourage myself and maybe give someone in a similar situation some ideas. I don’t know how regular this will be but I’m shooting for twice a month.

Here are a few highlights of some recent frugal things I’ve done:

Veggie garden harvest! My bounty from one day in the garden. The temps have been cooling and we’re getting some much needed rain. Me watering my veggies is not the same as a deep soaking rain water! Also harvested herbs. I have another cantaloupe on the vine!

-used white vinegar in the rinse agent container in my dishwasher. Much cheaper and works just as well.

-went through my old “painting t shirts” and cut them up to use as rags instead of paper towels

-pitted and froze some cherries my husband brought home from a business trip. He gets a meal allowance when he travels and sometimes when he doesn’t use it all he brings home some things that we wouldn’t ordinarily buy. Like a couple of pounds of organic cherries! I did tell him that he doesn’t have to buy all the fruit in a bag – he can take some out. It was a new and novel idea to him   Anyway, I had just bought a 1/2 lb of non-organic cherries the day before and knew I wouldn’t be able to eat all of them before they got soft. So I froze some to use in smoothies or maybe for a nice cherry crisp to have  in the middle of winter- won’t that be a nice treat!

-we stopped eating  a lot of meat as of last November. We really only have meat two or three times a week and even then it’s small amounts. I made creamy basil chicken for dinner and sliced each boneless chicken breast in half – that gives me 2 meals from 3 chicken breasts. I slice them the long way – so they’re thin (like if you pounded them to make them thinner).  We try to make the veggies the bigger portion on the plate.

-all summer we’ve kept a bowl in the sink and a bucket in the kitchen. When we rinse veggies or strain pasta etc. We capture the water in the bowl then empty into the bucket. I use that water for my ferns planted by the front door and all my plants on the deck and porch.

-I watched some YouTube videos on how to dehydrate vegetable and fruits. I do freeze quite a bit of summer produce but I’m running out of room and anyway, I think it’s a good idea to have canned or dehydrated food on hand since you never know when the power will be out. We had an ice storm one year where we didn’t have electricity for almost two weeks!

-my amazing husband fixed our gas grill! He went to use it one day and noticed that the burner bar was totally disintegrated!

We did look at new grills  but even a good inexpensive one was more than what we really wanted to spend. So we found our manual (that grill is 5 years old but we keep all of our manuals in one place). Located the part number – did a google search for that number and found a place that sells replacement parts.

So for $27 my husband replaced the part and now the grill is good as new! Plus the grill got a good cleaning in parts that you normally don’t even see! Also, it’s something he’s never done before, but he was at least willing to try!

It’s been so hot that the laundry we hang to dry dries quicker than it would in the dryer! Now that’s hot  We always dry our kitchen towels on the line and rack. We don’t always do our clothes. But I’ve found that putting the clothes in the dryer for about 10 minutes when they’re almost dry – makes them soft and not scratchy. 10 minutes vs. the 60 minutes it usually takes is quite a savings in electricity!

-my equally amazing daughter made some cheese stuffed pretzel rolls. They were sooo good! We had them with some salad. We froze half of the dough to make cinnamon pretzels for snacks for another time. Here’s the recipe she used Ham and Cheese Stuffed Pretzels. She left out the ham.

-I also browned 2 lbs of ground beef and froze it for quick meals. We only eat grass fed beef but we eat so little of it that it doesn’t matter that it’s more expensive. I usually add beans when I use it for Mexican recipes and we use it more as flavoring in pasta dishes.

So that’s just a bit of what I’ve been doing lately. What have you done lately that’s frugal?