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No car today or tomorrow - and didn't use the car when I had it on Tuesday - too hot today or tomorrow to walk but for exercise in the early AM - though yesterday, I walked to the library and stockpiled some decorating books and a DVD. Today I painted a table and made a cover for an old step stool which I will sell at an upcoming vintage sale I participate in.
I did stop into the grocery store yesterday to drop off my plastic bags and saw they had beef kabobs on special. Oh, good idea! I went home and made chicken kabobs and had the leftovers today for lunch.
I am working really hard to have this be a super-frugal summer. We had to put in new steps this spring and will be going to Ohio for a family reunion - the first on this side of the family in over 15 years.
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June 27---last couple of days
--found eye of round beef on at NoFrills $2.00 a lb bought about 12 lbs and cooked up a few lbs and a jar of BBQ sauce on sale for $1.00
as Pulled Beef to bring to a Pot luck ended up cheaper then the dessert I was going to make. And, enough to cut up and freeze for lots of other meals.
Now that I know it was nice I am going back to get more for the freezer.
--Using up a jar of Pear Juice (not sure why I have it because I don't like it) to make some jello with berries. Good fibre...lol
--still way down on what I have spent so far this year on food...tracking is very helpful
--sold 2 more items on Kijiji I am really on a roll with this and the garage does not look much different----still lots in there.
--fridge is really empty because I keep checking and using what is there.
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A few little frugals today. Had a no drive, no spend day because instead of going to a coffee shop or cafe to work when I was losing my focus working at home, I went outside and stacked firewood for an hour. :~) I didn't necessarily get completely refocused as a result, but it was still cheaper than the alternatives! Ate some more cherry tomatoes from the garden. Ordered a book I needed off of paperbackswap.com instead of getting it from the bookstore. It is an out of print book so for some reason I was convinced I wouldn't be able to find it easily, but there is was, waiting for me to request it from another poster! Did a load of laundry and will hang it on the line to dry since we're having nice weather. It's supposed to get much warmer this weekend so will do my best to get the house closed up tight beforehand so that we can limit the A/C use. That's it for now!
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I made a big batch of bread pudding this morning to feed the ravenous hordes. I'm trying to keep to my $500 a month budget, but finding it tricky with all of the extra people hanging out this summer. I have an extra teenage boy for breakfast and lunch everyday and friends of the girls' trickle in and out quite a bit too. As it is there are 8 people living here and the heat doesn't help. I'm determined, though, and I have been doing pretty well so far. It's mostly a function of finding the energy to do the money-saving stuff and working around the heat at this point. The energy stuff should get somewhat better now that Charlotte is pretty regularly sleeping through the night. Hopefully, anyway.
The teenage boy I'm watching had his birthday yesterday and we had the party here. We went swimming and made porketta sandwiches. It was fun. Bella will have a similar party in two weeks and she has asked to go horseback riding for her big present.
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Very pleased to have made it through the first day of our heat wave without turning on the A/C! It got up to 95 degrees here today with moderately high humidity. I had the windows open last night and the whole house fan on, but the overnight temps only got down into the mid-60s so the house was cool this morning, but a bit on the humid side. I closed the windows and drew the blinds early this morning and throughout the day the temperature inside got up to 76 degrees by late afternoon, but that was fine. Now it's cooled off outside, the humidity has dropped, and their is a nice breeze blowing. So I'm enjoying hanging out on the deck with the dogs. I've got the windows open and the whole house fan on again so overnight the house should get back down into the 60s and we can repeat again tomorrow! The best part is that these long sunny summer days we when we generate the most solar electric energy and not using the A/C means that I'm improving the chances of us having another electric bill with a negative balance!
I did have to leave the house today for a meeting. But it was a lunch meeting and I got to bring home some leftover pizza so that was a good deal. And I managed to combine the trip out with a few errands so that was helpful, too.
Looking forward to doing some more gardening this weekend even with the heat. It's always a good frugal way to pass the time since there really isn't much I need to buy for the garden or the yard.
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June 29
--Only spent $30.00 on gas this month and still have over 1/2 tank....been walking and combining trips
--with coupons for free product and buy one get one free I bought $72.00 worth of groceries for $36.00, and that is not counting how much was saved by buying in season and on sale items...
--by moving perninals around and splitting I have filled a whole flower bed at no cost..
--had two new curtain rods installed (had them for two years now) so was able to put up the room darkening and heat reflecting curtains on the heavy rods. The two rooms face west so they are really helping in this heat. Also, installed a hand held shower head (also, had for two years) save money because it is easier to turn on and off when showering. It also, makes it quicker therefore uses less water when I try to clean the shower.
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Lin: Your garden sounds very impressive! Good work getting out there in the heat after work; that takes some fortitude. We just have a tiny suburban tomato patch, and I call DH the Deadbeat Dad of the Vegetable Gardening World!
Chrissieq: Good luck in reaching your goals. It sounds like you're doing really well in the entertainment dept.
Stella: You always make me hungry - I want bread pudding :)
Danna: The pork sounds good too - care to share the recipe?
Cdttmm: It was pretty steamy here today too. I had the day off and did all my household chores, because we're having company tomorrow evening, and I want to focus on that tomorrow with a little bit of gardening on the side. We don't have a/c, so we always manage without turning the a/c on. I've got a couple of big Patton blower fans going and the windows open. It's 82 degrees in here, and it feels pretty comfortable to me. I took a shower and changed into a sundress after I finished working for the day.
I was virtuous in terms of spending this week, and I think my best frugal was making time to go to the Boston Public Gardens yesterday at lunch time. I usually eat lunch while working at my desk, but I felt like I could spare a little bit of time and I wanted to get out because it was such a beautiful day. I checked out the roses and the flower beds, and I realized that I was doing the type of thing I like to do on vacation (visiting a botanical garden) and I realized that I was giving myself a 20 minute vacation in the middle of an ordinary workday, and it was absolutely free, and made my entire day the better for it, and it felt like some sort of cosmic revelation or something. :)
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I am listening to the wonderful sound of my jam jars popping as they seal. 4th batch from our garden this year, because there are just too many berries to eat! It's a good 'problem' to have. Now I feel like a pro at water bath canning.
We're back in frugal mode now after a road trip that involved a few nights of hotels and about 1 meal out per day. We had breakfast at the hotels and packed foods for lunches and snacks, so it could have been worse. It felt pretty decadent... but, at what price visiting family and friends? It was a good time, good to re-connect. And afterwards, it was really good to be home and done with driving.
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Rosemary, that jam sounds delightful! Rosa, your trip to the gardens sounds lovely too!
This is OT week for Zach, by our own choice. He worked 2 hours of OT last night and 8 today. We are determined to save his OT pay.
Last night Zach was pushing to go out for pizza because both of us were quite tired when he got home from work. Instead I made tacos. That probably saved us $40 because he wanted to go to a place that has some crazy pop machine with something like 75 different pop combinations, so he would have wanted everyone to get drinks on top of the pizza. That really adds up. This is one way in which having 5 kids makes me more frugal. It very rarely seems easier to go out now than to make something simple and stay in. Even 5 very well behaved kids, which mine generally are, are kind of a pain to haul in and out of a car and in and out of a restaurant booth. I want to start actually saving the money we save by talking ourselves out of stuff like that. It would be fun to see it add up.
After the kids went down we took Charlotte with us to Target to get Zach some gym clothes for playing basketball on Tuesdays. My dad stayed with the kids and gave Zach money for the gym clothes as part of his graduation present. We also got Cheyenne some new shoes because she outgrew her old ones and has been borrowing my flip-flops. The shoes were 70% off and only $8. I can't believe she's wearing a women's size 5. That's what my mother wears. She is 8 years old.
The girls and their friend have decided that they would like to have a neighborhood carnival to raise money for Feed My Starving Children. I actually think they could really do some good business here in our neighborhood, so I am considering providing some seed money for this. We want to have some traditional carnival games, but also food sales and some less traditional stuff, like slip-and-slide knee hockey, a kid wash for kids and their bikes and spiral painting. They also want to incorporate a bike parade.
They want to have hot dogs, chips, pop and cotton candy. I showed them the cost of renting a hot dog roller and a cotton candy machine ($40 and $50) and had them figure out how many they would have to sell at different prices to make up the cost of the machines. Then later we'll price the food ingredients and find out how much each item would cost us. Then we can figure out how to price them so that we can make money. That was some good math practice for them. I'll have to run this by some neighbors, but I think it would be an easy sell. We could see what kind of stuff people could donate too. The value of this project would be two-fold. First, the learning value to the kids and secondly, the money we would make for the charity. I suppose there is also the added value of more community building too.
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Stella, glad to hear your kids are so kind and I like the idea of the carnival!
My June frugal:
It's been so hot so I needed 2-3 sleeveless tops that are work-appropriate. I rarely find stuff in my size at the thrift store and with my current schedule, I have no time. So, on one of my regular runs to Target for groceries and other necessities, I stopped by the women's clothes. I found nice tops for $10 each. I got 2. That was several weeks ago. When I was at Target yesterday, I wandered back there to see if they'd gotten any more colors. They had, and they were now $8. I got 1.
