April daily frugal's

Glad to hear all seems to be going well for everyone in the last few days.

Went to JoAnn Fabrics today. Picked up tulle at .75 a yard for the Halloween Bazaar to make little girl veils or tutus. Also bought barrettes to attach them to. Additionally I got a scrapbook and paper to make an ABC baby book for a friend who is going to have a baby. The idea is that you do one page per letter and then later the parents can just plop some photos on there. I really debated over buying additional solid colors of paper but opted not to because I have so much here. I just hope I have the right colors to work with. I also passed on stickers and stuff. With the patterns in the pack I bought I can make it really cute or pick up something later on if needed. Everything I bought was 50% off. It worked out well.

DH and I are going to refinance our house. There is a no closing-cost refinance available through our lender that will lower our interest rate by 1.5%. Of course it is accomplished by starting the 15 year clock over again, but we figure if we continue to pay what we have been paying all along, it results in a net savings for us. Interestingly we discovered this possibility as we were researching our rental property idea. If we hadn't been pursuing that option, we wouldn't have found out about this. If we decide to do nothing else, that will have been worth it!

We have been eating down the pantry with good success. Two more meals are planned with materials on hand, and then next weekend or this weekend we will go to Costco and restock on some of our "staples." Since we actually use all the things we buy in bulk and use them relatively quickly, I do feel it is a savings to go to Costco. My DFiL and DMiL generously let us piggyback off of their membership so that is no cost to us.

Going out to eat with a friend tonight. Yum yum! We ate lunch in even though we were out and ravenous but we came home and made grilled cheese and probably faster than it would have been to go out, anyway.

Here is the requested recipe! Hope it didn't take too long!

It is from the book Mexican Cooking for Dummies by Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. This is the best Mexican cooking book I have found - very authentic and easy recipes. I lived in Mexico for two years after college and ate much delicious sopa de fideo, and this recipe is just like it. It calls for chiles but is not spicy.

It is suuuuuuper frugal, especially if you use your own tomatoes in season. The chiles are probably the most expensive part, but they keep forever.

Need: Blender
Yield: 6 servings

1/3 c. olive oil (I never use this much - I just eyeball it)
8 ounces dried angel hair pasta, broken into one-inch pieces (you can buy any pasta by La Moderna brand and it will work)
3 dried chipotle chiles
1 1/2 pounds Roma tomatoes (I used cherries last year and it was delish)
6 gloves garlic, peeled
1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped
1/2 c. water
2 teaspoons salt
6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1. Heath the olive oil in a large stockpot over medium-low heat. Sauté the pasta, stirring frequently, until golden brown, being careful not to burn. Then stir in the chiles and cook for 2 minutes longer.

2. Meanwhile, combine the tomatoes, garlic, onion, water, and salt in a blender. Puree until smooth.

3. Add the tomato puree and stock to the stockpot. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook until the noodles soften and the flavors meld, about 15 minutes. Remove and discard the whole chiles.

Kat, Hope your kitchen remodel works out well. That is the one room we haven't tackled. After 26 years in this house, I have finally figured out a plan (a real challenge, small room with five entryways). Now we just need the time and money! It would be great if you could post your after pictures for inspiration.
Stella, Mango coconut oatmeal actually makes oatmeal sound - sexy! I would not have thought such a thing possible.
Fidgie, Good for you on the refinance. That's a major score!
Forget everything I posted yesterday, by the way. I have temporarily conceded defeat to the squirrel. >:(>:( Let's face it, he has nothing better to do, and it's a matter of survival for him to get to the food. And practice makes perfect, so he's gotten quite good at circumventing our baffle. (I've decided that the "baffle" in squirrrel baffle refers to the amused bafflement in their little squirrel brains as they scratch their heads in puzzlement, thinking, "silly human, you thought THAT was going to stop ME?") So I've ordered a new feeder, similar to one I have that has proven to be squirrel proof. At least we tried to solve the problem without spending. I'm also beginning to feel like a cartoon character doing battle with this squirrel - Elmer Fudd comes readily to mind!
And we ended up going to a nice seafood restaurant in Gloucester for our seafood dinner last night, spending almost twice what I had earned on the survey. It was very nice though, and we hadn't eaten out or gotten takeout at all this month. But still can hardly be considered frugal! Oh well.

Remembered another one! My mom is going to lend me her Cricut to make the album I posted about above. She bought it and rarely uses it, so she shares it freely. I have a little bit of a mixed feeling about this because my mom hoards and uses our borrowing or taking things as a justification to acquire more. But I'm pretty much over that - if she has it and isn't going to use it, I'm not going out to spend $400 on one!

Kelli thanks for the soup recipe!

LOL Rosa, that probably is what the word "baffle" refers to with squirrels.

I am SO GLAD we didn't buy a lot of candy for Easter. They got a ton of sugar at the free Easter Egg Hunt at church and some really sweet neighbor girls in their teens and twenties brought the kids an Easter basket with giant suckers, gum, bubbles, glowing koosh balls and a big giant blue bouncy ball. I'm sure there will be sweets at the reception tonight and probably at the brunch tomorrow too. Candy is one of those things I am learning to let other people buy. There's no stopping the flood at holidays, so why spend the money on it?

Baby T looks so cute in his borrowed baptismal outfit! Just so stinking cute. Unbelievable. Love it.

Just got home from a free lecture on/by the Tuskegee Airmen - it was a really good program! I'm hoping I can get our school to have them come in to speak. Since I had to run over to Mom's anyway, attending the lecture didn't add too many additional miles. I also stopped at the local bread bakery and at Aldi's on my way, so although I spent money there, no additional gas was burned. I'm debating on whether to get a $25 Amazon gift card w/ my VISA points, or hold out another month or two for the $50 in cash. I've already got one $50 check this year, just for using the VISA instead of my debit card! I think I'd better hold out for the cash - if I get the card, I'll just go looking for things to buy, lol. And I just made a purchase there last week. Other than that - I have laundry to hang, which may or may not get dry in the house, as it's very humid. I have chicken in the crockpot, to make chicken salad for dinner. I ate left-overs most of last week at lunch, except for Friday, when I met an ex-coworker/friend for lunch at the cafeteria in the county Admin building. The food was overpriced and not great, but the company was wonderful, and worth the cost. Tomorrow we go out for Easter dinner (Fried Chicken! yum!) so no cooking, yay.

Had a wonderful day today. Two of my sisters and their families are in town for Easter. DH and I visited with them and watched their girls do an Easter egg hunt--so much fun! Then afterwards, we had a blast playing with them and the toys in their Easter baskets--things like a light up top and squishy rubber dolphin. :-)

One of my sisters brought me a TON of baby clothes, a very nice breast pump, and some bottles. I've gone through the clothes already; out of 2 large bags, there were only about 9 or 10 things that were stained or pretty worn (after going through 4 girls!) or a duplicate of something else she had given me. I feel good knowing that the baby will have some things to get started with. I appreciate her generosity so much. I'm going to send her a real card in the mail next week!

My dad gave me a $10 off card for Kohls and told me to buy something for the baby. It expires today, and I am thinking about getting a little sundress for next summer. It has tulip-shaped pockets and I think Dad would get a kick out of it. Tulips are his favorite flower (and mine, too). With the coupon it will only cost around $2.

Tonight we are heading over to see DH's niece at his parents house. His mom came by with her today and dropped off some eggs they had colored and an Easter treat bag. Our DN (4 years old) wrote our names on the bag, and it is so cute.

Tomorrow we will be going to church and then lunch at my dad's. He is making a ham dinner.

We start our allergy elimination diet on Monday, so we've really been cleaning out the freezer this week. Of course, that didn't result in a huge amount of savings compared to what I spent on groceries to prepare. But, since it's getting to be spring - finally - it is a good time to do this, since lots of great produce will be available.

At our annual church auction, the youth group donated a day of work. We bid on it and won it and they came over today. It was fabulous! Just 4 extra people made such a huge difference in how much we could get done in a day. Was it frugal? Well, it certainly was worth the money spent; it built community; and our house is in great shape, having things done that we might not have gotten to all summer.

For Easter I'm doing an egg scavenger hunt for DD. She enjoys finding the eggs (we use plastic ones) more than anything else. They will have a trail of clues that will eventually lead her to her (candy-free) basket. (There will be plenty of candy at church tomorrow.)

Kat, that dress sounds adorable!

Rosemary, that auction win sounds like an excellent value for your money! We paid my friend's teen and his friends to help up dig out the window well for our egress window last fall. They had it done in 45 minutes. It really does make a difference having extra hands to help.

What a crazy/awesome couple of days! The confirmation and baptism was so beautiful! Beyond words. The reception afterwards was just lovely. We had sandwiches, sugared whole strawberries, wine, punch and cake. Our friend who runs hospitality at our church gave us an entire cake afterwards. Enough to feed 50 people. I'm going to freeze some of it.

We got so many lovely presents; a beautiful crucifix, two wall crosses, two books for us and a beautiful book of Tomie dePaola bible stories. Today we went to Travis' Godfather's house for Easter brunch. His mom went all out. Strata, baked french toast, two fruit salads, some kind of almond filled pastry, a rosemary pastry with strawberry jam and lemon glaze, pomegranite bellinis and champagne sangria. Amazing! His mom also put together a little gift for each kid with a shovel and pail, colouring books, stickers, pencils, sidewalk chalk, a toothbrush and some candy. Afterwards we went to Travis' Godmother's house so all the kids could run around in her huge yard, play street hockey on their very long diveway and play in the sandbox.

T's Godmother just got a really cool play structure for their backyard. Her mom and dad are considering getting the waterslide attachment for it. I think I'm as excited as she is about that. The kids are going to have hours and hours of fun this summer playing out there while we sit in the shade and talk. I've got the pool, tennis court, volleyball court and basketball court and she's got the play structure, fire pit, ice rink, street hockey stuff and, as of next summer, the Grandpa Bob-built fort. If you knew Grandpa Bob, you'd know how cool that is going to be. The man is a genius (literally) and has an unrivaled sense of whimsy. Between us we've got pretty much everything the kids could want.

Tonight's dinner is fried eggs and toast. Nobody is all that hungry, so we're keeping it simple and cheap.

I hauled 3 loads of mulch from the county compost site today. It's free. I'll get 2 more tomorrow and a load or two of compost. It's less than a mile from our house so I don't even use much gas.

I'm preparing some foods ahead for the first week on the allergy elim diet. This isn't very different from most Sunday evenings, because I generally try to get ready for the week this way. It saves a lot of time, especially in the mornings when I'm making breakfast and packing lunches, and helps me see what groceries I
might need.

The herb seeds that DD and I started for teacher gifts are doing well. On our work day yesterday we washed all of my plant pots that weren't in use, so I'll peruse those to find ones that might be suitable.