July Frugals

I'm always so pleased to come and read about everybody's frugals on this thread because I am feeling like I don't have much to add this month! But I know I've done some frugal stuff, so let me see what I can come up with.

Bought heartworm prevention at the vet the other day for all 3 dogs -- and got 3 mail in rebate coupons so that will be $45 saved (assuming they accept all 3 coupons, there weren't any rules about 1 per household that I could find, but you never know).

Used coupons to buy cat food, dog food, and cat litter and earned some in-store reward dollars that I will use on my next pet food shopping extravaganza.

Hung some laundry on the line earlier this week when we finally had a nice, sunny, not-to-humid day.

Been picking blueberries from our blueberry bushes and enjoying them.

Cut some lettuce from the garden and will have salad today.

Been drinking up my stash of green tea. I did break down and buy some more tea in tea bags because it was easier to carry when traveling, but I'm back to using up my stash of loose tea now that I'm home.

Finally went to the post office and got some money refunded for unused postage meter strips.

Got a coupon in the mail for a free drink at Starbucks since my b-day is this month. I'll use that when I travel to Austin for work next week.

Have figured out that flying Delta to and from Austin every month should get me enough frequent flyer miles that I can get a free plane ticket for when I fly home to MN for the holidays. Woot -- big win on that one!

Had another month with a negative electricity bill -- thank you solar panels!!!

Wow -- that's definitely more than I thought I had and there are probably a few I forgot. Feeling better about staying on the frugal path right now!!!

I was in the farmer's market this morning and really wanted this $6 thing. But I had only $2 and a credit card. To get wooden tokens with the card would have cost me an extra $2. After wracking my brain for strategies to go get them money, I didn't do it. That's one for impulse control.

Zach worked some extra hours today. I suppose its not saving money, but since he is not terribly functional in the morning unless he gets dressed and gets out of the house, earning money is a good way for him to spend the morning. :)

I used the meal planning app my dad gifted me and it had a couple of recipes on it for stuff I want to make this week using stuff I have on hand.

Travis destroyed my keyboard, which is not frugal, but I replaced it with a nice one from the thrift store for $4.

I have been reserching ideas for the kids' rooms for months now and I think I have finally got a plan in place. I am going to see if I can get FIL and Zach to make these triple bunk beds for the kids. The boys don't really need three beds, but it never hurts to have a spare for sleepovers. We are going to modify them to have a climbing wall instead of a ladder, a shelf for each bunk and a full railing on the upper bunks for safety. Charlotte's bunk, the lowest one, will be blocked off at the foot and have a crib-style gate that can be removed. We'll get rid of the crib and just use that for her when she outgrows the pack n play. The girls' room would fit three beds without trouble, but this will give them more floor space.

The girls' room has two closets, one with a LEGO table and one empty one. The boys' room has a closet and an alcove. I am going to have Zach make a desk for the boys' room in the alcove from the old wood paneling, so it will be free. Both the closet in the boys' room and the empty closet in the girls' room will have reading nooks like the one in this blog post with shelves above for books and toys. Then all of their toys and books will be stored in the closet and the rolling window seat. The girls will have two reading nooks for privacy, both in the closet area and their beds will take up only a bit more space than one bed takes up now. The boys will have a lego desk for when they are older and a book nook with toy and book storage for now and their bed will also take up only a bit more space than one bed.

Tomorrow Dad is taking the kids on a train ride and Zach and I are going to do some organizing. He is adjusting the clothing storage to accomodate Charlotte's stuff and I am going to reorganize the pantry. That will make it easier to keep track of what we have.

Chose to skip garage/estate/thrift shopping today. Instead DH took the car to church to take a CPR class - free for ushers. Stayed home and cleaned bathrooms, prepped dinner, straightened up the screen porch, finished one library book and started another. Later in the afternoon, took a nap.

We are back from a 14-day car trip to visit our little grandaughter and it was amazingly frugal.

First of all, since my daughter was on a business trip she saved the cost of a baysitter for a week. Since we won't take money for watching our own grandkid as she and her husband proposed, she paid for my styling and cut at her favorite spa...and even had them wax my eyebrows. I had my hair cut a bit shorter than usual so I can hold out on having it cut for a few extra weeks, and then I'll have my local (cheap) stylist trim it to maintain its shape.

We used the points from my credit card and hotel bonus card for 4 of the days at motels on the way to FL and back. This included a free breakfast each day of the trip down and back.

Three-year olds are cheap dates. We went to two different children's museums on their family admission card, ate at a fast food place with her best friend, swam in the pool, and played games when it was too hot to play outside. Who knew Candyland could be such fun?

We also got to celebrate DH's birthday with them. The star of the party was a cake decorated with toy soldiers by our granddaughter. One of his presents was a picture book of her past year made by our talented daughter. They also gave hime a gift card to Lowes which I know was sneaky way to give us some money.

We've decided to use the funds on the card to take of some needed home repairs

And last but not least, I made the final payment on my car. We now own it free and clear and were able to pay it off in half the loan term, saving lots of interest.

Stella, sounds like a lot of fun building projects. I like the jungle gym aspect of the bunk beds. I do have a few concerns.

As a small child, I managed to roll up and over the guard rail of the top bunk in my sleep. I woke iup just after rolling over the edge. Discovered it really is like in the movies where time slows before something horrible happens. Still remember the perception of the long, long, long fall before crashing into the floor.

Some of the children in our house after having read a pirate story, disassembled the guard rail from the top bunk in order to get a long board/plank. They wedged one end between the mattresses and the other end inside the open top drawer of a large heavy chest of drawers. One child then attempted to reenact the pirate story by walking the plank. The physics/leverage of the situation caused the chest of drawers to overturn. Fortunately the children were agile. The one walking the plank managed to leap out of the way during the fall as did the children on the floor. No children were crushed. Our mom did possibly lose a few years off her life contemplating the results of such a noise as she ran from the kitchen into the bedroom. I mention this since your children are skilled at repurposing and making things. ;)

As a child, I found that making up either the top or bottom bed was an ordeal and changing the linens even more so. The bottom one usually resulted in some injuries, usually head smacking, but sometimes hand or arm injuries if you overbalanced and fell while trying to shove the sheet around the mattress on the wall side. The top was really scary because you had to be on one edge while wrestling the other edge. And then it was important to be really, really careful not to back up too far so that you didn’t back up over the edge. For an adult it is difficult, especially on the wall side.

In the three bed design, I think it will be really hard to make up the bottom bed at the ladder and the middle bed at the ladder.

The child on the bottom bunk once past 6 or 7 can have a hard time doing things like reading in bed due to height restrictions. The child on the bottom bunk tends to get less sleep due to the noise of the one on the top bunk moving around on the bed. It’s not really safe for the child on the top bunk to do anything other than sleep.

Consider the speed at which the child on the middle or top bed can climb down and get to the bathroom when sick, especially if they have something that involves vomiting or diarrhea, or high fever with dizziness, or a broken arm/leg.

Some higher cage-like designs make it less likely that the child on the top will fall. These make making the bed or changing the linens much harder.

There have been some discoveries in the last 10-15 years or so about which bunk bed designs result in fewer suffocations of children.

On the plus side, I have also seen some very fun bunk bed designs where each child had a top bunk bed. The space under the bed had play space and shelves/bins, or a desk and bookshelves, or a comfy chair/small sofa and shelves.

Stella, those bunk beds are adorable!! Post picks when you're done please?? The creative side-rails are wonderful - are you doing those or another motif? I wish all families could/would utilize their resources they way you and your DH do (mine included :|() My frugals for the moment include, besides the same old stuff - cutting up a roast and freezing the pieces BEFORE they turned green.. (DD and I are doing really well with our 'waste no food' campaign), not purchasing anything at yard sales yesterday unless it was for resale or on our need list, and letting Mom buy us lunch :D. LilyB, great on the car pay-off! May it drive you around for many many years and/or miles! Amaranth, my cousin and I changed the sheets on her bunks by pulling out the mattress, which was foam and not really heavy. I don't remember it being a big deal. And put the least-restless child on the top bunk! In many old homes, the ceilings are really high, so anyone on a top bunk wouldn't be anywhere close to hitting the ceiling, but that is a good point - I don't know how high Stella's ceilings are! Falling is an issue, whether sleeping, climbing trees, whatever, and reasonable precautions should be taken. That said, each family has to decide their own "reasonable"...

I'm loving this one...

Not too high, and nice and compact.

http://casadiez.elle.es/decoracion_i...les3/(image)/8

My DH doesn't want the boys to have bunk beds since he fell out and broke his collar bone. We do have an old home but the ceiling in their room is a bit on the low side.

Mara I love that one! Both Zach and I had bunk beds as a kid and I agree they can be a bit of a pain to change the sheets. We do have foam mattresses, so that helps a little, not being so heavy. We are definitely going to add sturdier railings. FIL is a carpenter and he is very mindful of that kind of thing after having four boys. He is really good at making things sturdy and secure. We will put the cut-outs on the outside of the railings instead of using them as railings themselves. Cheyenne wants a paw print and Bella wants a heart.

Amaranth your story about your siblings does remind me of my kids. They are just that kind of crazy/resourceful.

I volunteered today at the maternity closet at church. We had a big baby stuff drive for a charity and we were sorting the donations. The maternity closet recieves donations from companies like Gymboree and Carters of out of season clothes, but we don't stock anything over 4T because of space issues. We sorted out boxes and boxes of clothes donated by corporations, a lot of them boxes of one style of shirt or one kind of jeans in different sizes. They told me to take some for my bigger kids. I got a bunch of jeans and shirts for fall. Considering it's Gymboree, where they charge like $20 for socks, it was probably $300 worth of clothes new. We decided we'd take the rest over to Caring and Sharing Hands this week so the kids there can get brand new clothes before school starts. We had 4 boxes of jeans alone and several boxes of other clothes. Gorgeous stuff. On top of the clothes I got for my kids, it was just good FFF. The girls and I are volunteering again next week and the week after with the maternity closet.

I think I need very little this week for groceries. I was looking in the frigdge and I think I pretty much just need milk and bananas. Maybe bread.

Church this morning and a quick trip to Target to pick a filter for our sink. Our tap water has gotten worse over the last year in taste, and until we can afford to put in a full sink filter we picked this up. I've been buying big jugs of bottled water and this will be a more cost effective solution. We drink a lot of water from our water bottles and I'd like it to taste good (mine has a filter in it, but my DH's and kids don't).

Then over to Home Depot for some wood to fix our back steps and some hooks to hang up folding chairs. We trash picked 8 really nice old style metal ones and needed them up off the ground.

Making dinner with enough for leftovers for lunch for DH (thankfully he prefers to take lunch from home) and some mini muffins for snacks/breakfast for the next few days.

Tomorrow we are essentially home, except for a bike ride to the library. After last weeks VBS, I am tired of being on the go. We will I think be driving down to Toledo on Tuesday to go to the science museum.

I just tried my hand at refrigerator pickles, hoping they turn out! My plants are doing great as are the tomato plants.