I will start the September Frugals.....

I took advantage of the heat today to hide in the house and do some planning and cleaning. I had bought myself a three ring binder and dividers during the school supply sales so I could make myself an organizer that would actually work for me. I could do something like that on the iPad, but if I'm going to the iPad to do things like check lists and menus, I often end up sucked onto Facebook or surfing the internet. Better to just avoid that temptation during work times. Today I got my menu, chore schedule, recipes for the month of September, celebrations for the month of September, school schedules, event schedules and calendars filled out. I have an envelope in my planner to keep handouts like colouring pages, worksheets, handouts for the Well Read Mom book club I just started and things like that and I am planning to use my three hole puncher for flyers with information I need, or assignments for my own school stuff. I printed off four colouring pages I think will be useful this month for the kids and some recipes I plan to use. I think it's going to help me keep everything sorted during this busy season and it cost me, I think, $5 total plus ink and paper used.

I also inventoried my freezer today and put the list in my new planner. I plan to update it as I go along and reinventory once a month to make sure I am making the best use of my resources. There was some stuff in there I had forgotten about that I will be making an effort to use up.

Had a garage sale yesterday and today with my sister - made just under $200 which is essentially free money!! Made a lot of folks happy cause we did a bag sale starting at noon today. Lots of stuff out of the yard and less to pack to take to Value Village. And spent no money all weekend!

I was the lead at a funeral reception at church last evening and ended up with a quart bag of lovely fresh fruit cause there was a huge overage on the food. Family took what they wanted and we split the rest between the workers. I was there for 5.5 hours and am washing the tablecloths as we speak/write to return tomorrow. Had a great crew to work with and spent lots of time getting to know each other - and maybe, hopefully, enlarging the group of volunteers!

Sep 05-06

Everyone is doing so good!!

--Pot of soup from freezer carcus and fresh produce
--The Bay sent me a spent $30.00 get $15.00 off so I managed to buy 5 Blouses (3 for gifts and 2 for me) org. price over $300.00 for $55.00 incl taxes
very pleased with them all. All women's all ready marked down clothes were an extra 50% off. I don't usually shop here because the prices are usually too
high for my budget. I will need to look closer at their sales at least for gifts. They also, now have a very large department of what they call "Above Average Sizes".
--Mac and cheese for supper using up some eggs, cheese, tomatoes, zucchini, and milk that was on its last day.
--frugal it was raining today so I didn't yardsale...lol

Stella I hope you get some better news soon...waiting is really hard. I have been going through a lot of this with my dsisters..so hard to not be
there to help all the time.

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Set up at a flea market today. We sold quite a bit of stuff, which was surprising as there were tons of dealers and not so many buyers. I found the exact style of small VB purse I have been wanting in a nice pattern, $10 and like new ($50!), so I bought it. I was going to have DD make me one, and still may, but now she knows exactly what I've been talking about, lol. Other than pecan rolls from our favorite baker, that was all we bought. Well, the coffee fund bought us frappes on the way home, but that doesn't count as out of my money, lol.

I'll echo what Kelli said; it sure is nice to hear from so many of you on this thread!
Our town held our annual fair yesterday. DH was at work so I walked down to it myself (and probably enjoyed it more because he doesn't particularly like that kind of thing). I donated $5.00 to the cat rescue group who hooked us up with our two boys, and I bought two bouquets of alstroemeria from the garden club for $3.00 each. So I was pleased with only spending $11. and pleased with how I spent it.
My sister is coming up today for our annual crafts fair outing, which will probably be less frugal than the town fair, but something of an annual ritual that we always enjoy together. She also asked if I would help her draw up a budget! I'm excited about that. She is a really high earner who spends pretty mindlessly, so I also think she would benefit from tracking her spending for a little bit. I bet she would be surprised on what her recreational spending equals. She would like to sell her condo and move closer to me and Mom, and I would love to see that happen! She bought at the height of the real estate bubble, so getting her financial house in order would be a critical element in accomplishing this. She is really smart, but one of those people who just doesn't give money the attention it deserves. I told her once that none of those great deals from Marshall's or TJ Maxx were great deals if you pay with a credit card on which you are carrying a balance, and she had never considered it that way. She also was amazed when she realized that we had no more mortgage or car payments or other debt and that DH was going to continue to work part time, because we were in a position to make that choice. I think I'll also give her my copy of YMOYL.

Thanks for the good wishes Kelli and Danna. It's been a rough year with one thing after another.

We are having a quiet day together. I have a whole chicken marinating to roast for dinner with some potatoes and carrots. Today is the feast of the Nativity of Mary so I am also making a cake. The kids are planning to put on a little play. I think we are going to play cards when the little kids nap. It should be nice and relaxing. I am hoping at some point to take a walk, too, but the sky is looking a little foreboding.

Sept 08
--for exercise today...1 hour of pulling and cutting back English Ivy, that wants to take over my house
--food...ate leftovers and fresh fruit (last of monster local watermelon bought for $1.88) great quality and good varity
--snacks..fresh banana, walnut, chocolate chip bread made by Dd...very yummy
and a couple of glasses of boxed on sale wine while I watched
--entertainment....last of new Master Theater Mystery "Silk" free and finished a book bought at a yard sale for $.25 "Arlington Park" good read.
I think that covers most needs and wants for a day...lol

Brought home some leftovers from the family reunion for DH, who didn't go. Trashpicked some lovely large silk plants and donated them to a local historical society for their lobby; they had been looking for some inexpensive ones, and these are nicer! Bought gas this AM before the price went up. And the same old things - have lunch packed for tomorrow, coffee pot ready so I can take a cup w/me on the drive to town; will drop DH at his pain clinic appointment and then he will spend the day with his brother, who will return him to the parking garage where I work, saving another vehicle trip to town (about 70 miles round trip).

Just some minor frugals lately:

- I helped a friend prep his property for a wedding reception/dance. It was a lot of work (no need for a gym those two days!) but I was fed lunch and dinner each day and got to do a little gleaning from his (vegetable) fields. Had fun visiting while we worked, too!
- Over the weekend, DW suggested going to Subway to get salads for dinner. I suggested instead making a salad from veggies and leftovers already in the fridge. I made a huge salad that left enough for my lunch the next day. Much less expensive and made with largely-local/organic ingredients rather than whatever shows up at the back door of the restaurant. I made clean-out-the-fridge chicken soup; very frugal and very satisfying. And we took a dessert to a get-together last night that required only purchasing a cup of whipping cream; everything else came out of our freezer or pantry.
- Did more research on our next mobile-phone carrier. Looks like the big decision will be how much network we want: most of the providers I'm looking at rely on one carrier's network and no roaming. Roaming costs more; wider networks cost more. Looks like we can get our smartphone/dumbphone bill down from around $120/month to about $20/month for the two of us. So maybe we'll add a few dollars a month for a Verizon-network phone which we'll share for road trips which will have coverage in far more places. DW and I are eligible to move now, but DD's part of the contract goes till spring 2014, so we have to figure if what we can save by leaving the T-Mo plan compensates for adding another phone bill for several months.

Fairly frugal weekend overall. We did eat out one night--tacos and ice cream--but it was pretty inexpensive. Cooked and ate at home the rest of the time. I've been using up what we have around here and haven't been to the grocery store in over a week. I am hoping to just swing by Aldi's and buy a few things and avoid a huge Walmart trip.

We are getting ready to start potty training DD. If we can get her potty trained, we can save quite a bit on diapers (since cloth diapers irritate her skin, we have to use disposables). I am going to give cloth diapering a shot with DS now that he is a bit bigger. Hopefully I can dig them out of storage and get them washed up this week. I wish Mrs. M was still around here. She always had such great advice for cloth diapering!

Other than that, just cleaning and organizing. DH cleaned our living room carpet himself this weekend, saving us $50-75. We are headed to our in-laws for dinner tonight. It is my MIL's birthday. I plan to make a dessert using up some of the stuff I have in the pantry. I will have DD color a picture for her as well.

I have been doing a pretty good job of getting back on track recently. Our weekend was very frugal. We got a few grocery items and a bike helmet for James, but other than that, we didn't really spend much. A bike helmet is a frugal purchase anyway since bike riding is otherwise good free fun and head injuries are expensive. :)

Mondays are my food prep day, so I have two more freezer meals to prep and then I'm done with main dishes for two weeks. Mondays are mostly a work day, except for math and spelling, so the girls and James will help me with the cooking. It's good practical life skills anyway.

I am starting to plan for Christmas, since funds are tight and I need to make some stuff. I am going to talk to Zach about the idea of building a little stage in our family room. It would be cheap to make, I'm sure, some 2x4s and plywood and we'd be in business. I have this idea, since the kids all have such a deep love of dramatic play and exhibition, that it might be fun to build some of that into our curriculum. Once a month we have a Presentation Day, where the kids work on one larger project based on whatever we have been learning, and show it off, usually to Zach and my Dad, but I have some neighbours who have expressed interest in attending Presentation Day too. Anyway, since they are always writing and putting on plays, I think it might be fun to do some of that related to various history topics we are studying or books we are reading. It could even be used for science demonstrations. For Christmas, I think we will give them the stage and I will work with them to thrift and make costumes and props to give to each other as gifts. Isabella, in particular, really wants to learn to sew. I was also thinking that we can take advantage of the Halloween section at the thrift stores this time of year to get some inexpensive stuff, and after-Halloween sales to get some things inexpensively.

Isabella has expressed an interest in learning to quilt. I don't really quilt, but my good friend, who lives in the neighbourhood, has offered to come over and give us all quilting lessons and help us make doll quilts. That should be fun and since we will use crap fabric, it will be free.

I had a no spend day. The only extra was for gas to go visit my DD.

Brought my lunch from home & didn't supplement with anything from the store.

We had storms today and when I got out of work the air was so humid that I expected to have to turn on the air when I got home. To my surprise and relief due to the windows being closed it was actually pretty nice inside my house. Turned on the fan instead of the air and we were quite comfortable. Tomorrow however it is supposed to be 93 and humid so we will probably turn the air on low or energy save before we leave.

Put a frozen pork roast in the crockpot before I left for work. It was perfect when I got home. We had shredded bbq pork sandwiches for dinner.

Forgot to go back to the basement and turn off the fluorescent light last night. >:( Discovered that when I got home this afternoon.

Yesterday Sept 09

--needed a certain over the counter medication...25 pills $3.30...75 pills $5.60.....so glad I know enough to do the the math.
--finally ate up the last of the $1.88 watermelon..that thing must have weighed 25 lbs...glad I know enough to eat in season
--lovely lunch out with Dd (Our favourite Indian Buffet so it didn't cost her a whole lot and we were stuffed so good), she paid as my birthday gift (Sept11) we have decided this is how we will celebrate instead of gifts.
--we took the bus as the restaurant is down town and parking is expensive, we got a transfer to come back so only used one ticket.

I made a lovely breakfast of crockpot apple and pear breakfast cobbler overnight. It had only 2 T of sugar to 10 cups of fruit, so it was pretty healthy, but tasted like a treat.

Zach did a side job last night for my dad's friend and made an extra $200. Most of that is savings. I played LEGOs with the big kids anfter the littles had gone to bed.

We had tuna melts and fruit for lunch and I have a freezer meal for tonight, so pretty frugal food. We are having ants on a log as a snack. I took the little kids to play by the pond in front of out house this morning and we watched the digging equipment that is working on our street. It was good, frugal, little kid fun. Tomorrow we are going to catch water bugs in a jar and watch them for a while. I was thinking that I should organize my science stuff by season. This afternoon the littles and I are napping and the big kids are doing some school work. It's a pretty quiet day, well, quiet except for the digging equipment outside. :) I really don't think Travis is napping. I'm pretty sure he has his nose pressed to the window watching the diggers.

That fruit cobbler sounds delicious, Stella. Would you be willing to share your recipe? I love ants on a log, too--I should make that for DD now that she can have peanut butter!

Went to the thrift store where my MIL works today. She watched the kids while I shopped. DH and I are interested in putting together a dress-up box for DD, so I wanted to check out the costumes. I found three Disney princess costumes from the Disney store. Two of them (Snow White and Rapunzel) were new and marked $45 each! The third (Belle) was in good shape but not brand new. I paid $8 for all three. The Belle costume needs to be re-hemmed, but for $2 I can do that! I am so, so excited about this. I have been watching these same costumes at the Disney store, and they almost never go one sale, and when they do, I still can't afford them. But $8 is totally do-able. :-) While at the thrift store, I also found a pair of Twinkle Toe shoes for DD in the next size up. She has been wanting a pair, but they, too, are $45 new, and the best I could do with sale and coupon is around $25. These were marked $1 and still light up. So happy to have found something she wanted.

Other than that, just shopping around for a deal on a car seat. DS has almost outgrown the infant seat already (DD was a year old before she did, but he's just so big!). Those I won't buy used just in case it was in an accident, but I do have a 30% off Kohls coupon I might be able to pair with a sale.

Dinner tonight will be leftovers with some lovely roasted zucchini I got from my neighbor's garden. I mean, she gave it to me--I didn't steal it or anything! LOL

Stella, I would also like the crock pot cobbler recipe. It sounds tasty and healthy.

For our frugals, I saved around $20 at Fresh and Easy using store coupons and buying clearance items. DH started to freak out and thought the manager would come over and question us because i was using so many coupons, but they were all store coupons they sent me for being in their rewards program. They let you use each coupon as many times as you want, so I stocked up on items like their pasta and simmer sauces, and had to scan in one coupon for every jar I bought.

This morning I made chicken in the roaster oven with one of their apricot grilling sauces, plus quinoa in the rice cooker. With a side salad that will be dinner tonight. I am trying to use quinoa more since the news articles about arsenic and lead in rice, but maybe there's stuff in the quinoa I don't know about.

We went out for brunch on the weekend with a half off coupon.

I hurt my foot exercising and the pain initially didn't go away after even a week or so of taking it easy. I looked up the probable cause and possible cures on the Internet. I didn't want to go to the doctor because it is September and I haven't used any deductibles for myself this year yet, so insurance wouldn't cover the doctor visit or Xrays. It seemed like I had something wrong with my metatarsal bone, and one of the treatments was a metatarsal pad. So being too frugal to buy a pad, I just started wearing my Teva's all the time, even in the house, since they are pretty cushy and the pain went away after a few days.

DW and I are attending a wedding in two weeks, a rare opportunity for me to wear a suit. My tie selection, however (all of two), needed an update. Yes, I could go to Goodwill or such. But my experience is that you rarely end up with a tie from a thrift shop that looks current. So it was off to J.C. Penney with a gift card I had laying around my hard disk. I found a tie in the clearance rack, in that lilac/purple colorway that's so popular these days. In six months or so, this color will be stone-cold out of fashion, so it's not worth spending much on the tie. Great! I also found a shirt to wear with it (DW had mentioned my current "suit shirt" was looking a little haggard) on another clearance rack. When I got to the checkout, the shirt rang up for $5.97, not the $13.99 it was marked. The clerk double-checked. So I got a new tie, a new shirt, and I still have almost $10 left to my $25 gift card. :cool: And I'll look as well-dressed as my wife at an event for a change. :)

Went out to eat at Maggiones on Sat. With a gift card we had. They had a special where you purchase one meal and then for a very minimal amount, for the two of us it came to three dollars you get a second meal of what you ordered free. So we did that and had salad left over, so we had dinner for a second night. Not all items were on this plan but the meals we had were very good.

We are having the roof replaced on our house and went with someone from Angie's list, who had all A's from customers, so I think it is frugal to be able to compare customer reviews and check out prices from the top two or three. One had poor customer service when they missed their appointment and never tried to reschedule.

My husband is of the age where he cannot do this himself so this is great for us.

Many no spend and no drive days. Although recently we bought some decorations for the house.

Have been trying to eat up the food we have in the refrigerator and we are doing better than usual. I am glad that people brought up this issue on another forum since we did have a problem with that. I used to shop for two weeks and then about a weeks worth of produce would go bad...

Chris

We love frappes and iced blended coffee drinks, but they're kinda pricey, so we mostly make our own. I am cooling leftover coffee right now, to do just that! We are also putting together some gift baskets to raffle at our museum fund-raiser. We donate the baskets and run the raffle, and they get a lot more money than they would if we just donated the cash we spend putting them together. We average about $600 a year in ticket sales with less than $150 spent on the baskets. We would rather give them $600 than $150 and this lets us do so, plus it's fun!:) We collect things all year (pretty cups and saucers, tea sets, aviation books/movies, soup bowls - whatever strikes our fancy and is inexpensive), and add soup mixes, coffee, teas, cookies - and lots of shredded paper- to make it look nice. DD does the actual assembly, as she has an eye for such things - the baskets look very professional when she is done.

Other than that, it's been the same old stuff. Hang wash, take lunch, buy gas at cheapest station, try not to buy anything extra, or waste food, etc. OH - we replaced our battery alarm with a windup one, and it didn't work. I took it back already, and I'll just have to remember to keep check on the battery backup on the clock radio.

Hope I got the right area to post this, just reminded how super important it is to keep reciepts. Our Aerobed started losing air almost exactly one year after we bought it but I checked the one page 'manual' and it said Two year warranty on the pump, seams, etc. So I called, they had me write an incident number on the bed, take a picture of it and my receipt, email them the pictures and they're sending us a new bed!! Wow! :0!


I'll never throw out another receipt or manual til I'm sure it's way past warranty.

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Originally Posted by Liv

Hope I got the right area to post this, just reminded how super important it is to keep reciepts. Our Aerobed started losing air almost exactly one year after we bought it but I checked the one page 'manual' and it said Two year warranty on the pump, seams, etc. So I called, they had me write an incident number on the bed, take a picture of it and my receipt, email them the pictures and they're sending us a new bed!! Wow! :0!


I'll never throw out another receipt or manual til I'm sure it's way past warranty.

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Right on! We keep all receipts for a year, organized by week, in an expandable folder sorted by month. DH does the books every Friday, balances the accounts, and files that week's receipts in the printed off balanced ledger from QB. Very easy to find a paper receipt by searching in QB, then locating it in the file. I love the system.

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Originally Posted by redfox

Right on! We keep all receipts for a year, organized by week, in an expandable folder sorted by month. DH does the books every Friday, balances the accounts, and files that week's receipts in the printed off balanced ledger from QB. Very easy to find a paper receipt by searching in QB, then locating it in the file. I love the system.

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What a great system, I am going to have to look into this!

Liv, welcome aboard! What a score! A testament to the power of organization as a tool for frugality.

Welcome, Liv! I can't tell you how many times I wished I had held on to a receipt! It sure pays off!

Well...DH and I kind of fell off the frugal bandwagon because...we bought a new van! It was kind of a need because our four-door sedan barely fit us all. The kids weren't really positioned very safely in their carseats, and we couldn't fit a fifth passenger (which means we couldn't take my dad anywhere (he is in a nursing home). So we started looking and found a beautiful, dark red 2011 Toyota Sienna. It can seat up to 7 people and is perfect for us. It is very clean and very nice! I guess the frugal part is that we traded DH's work driver and paid for the rest with a check...so no car payments, at least! But now my old car is DH's work driver, and since he gets so filthy at work, we had to buy seat covers, floor mats, and a steering wheel cover. Those things were expensive--like $75, I think. Eeek!

Another unfrugal is all the pictures we've been having done lately. DS's 3 month and DD's 2 year and family pictures. Another eek! But I know I will be glad to have those photos, and that's something you really can't put off too long when you have growing kiddos. Oh well--onward to frugality!

Things we've done well:

--DH finally got his raise. He had been promised one since January and had to hound his boss to get it. I kind of feel like it should be retroactive to that time, but the company is only going back to August since that is when his boss finally started filling out the paperwork.

--Will take DD to toddler time at the library today. It's free, and I think she will love it!

--I plan to make another pantry meal tonight.

--Will need to run to the store over the weekend for some fruit and milk. Making a list for coupons and price matching now.

--Someone gave me some canvas shoes for DD in a bigger size. They are used and were quite dirty (on the outside; the insides were fine). I washed them in the washing machine on hot, and they came out pretty nice!

Excellent news on the raise, Kat!

The recipe for the cobbler is 6 cups peeled and sliced apples, 4 cups peeled and sliced pears, 2T sugar, 2t cinnamon, 2T butter and a splash of lemon juice. Combine in the crockpot with the oats on top and cook on high for 2-3 hours. Super easy.

I got a call last night that I need to go out to Los Angeles next week to take care of my disabled sister. My aunt, who had been caring for her, had to quit and go back to Alaska because her husband has cancer a few weeks ago and the caregiver they hired for the daytime quit last weekend. They haven't found an evening caregiver and social security is hemming and hawing about paying for one. My mom can't take next week off, so I'm the only option. I've got meals in the freezer for most nights for Zach and the kids and we are managing, between vacation time and friends, to not lose income for the week. We are having to give up our weekend getaway to Duluth next week, which is a bummer, but it will save us money.

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Originally Posted by fidgiegirl

Liv, welcome aboard! What a score! A testament to the power of organization as a tool for frugality.

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Thanks but I wasn't too organized about it - spent a hour looking thru a big baggie filled with a years receipts, lol, got to try out redfox's idea, makes more sense!

Since we're retired we have just a few 'spending days' each month and are trying to get that as low as we can this month.

Hi Liv, welcome to the forums, it will be nice to have you aboard to read about your simple living ideas! Chris

No driving for me today. We did spend money on iced tea for the roofing crew for tomorrow, hopefully they will drink it...that was our only expense for today.

Have been eating at home a lot and plan on trying to make some almond milk yogurt so I can get closer to my vegan goal now. Yogurt is the only thing I eat a lot of that is a milk product and have also been eating a little cheese on salads when we go out to eat, so these two things will be easy to remedy...and will help us to cut down on food expenses more...


DH's royalty check was a little less than he expected so there definitely will be much less spending this month!

Stella, So sorry you have to take the trip to LA unexpectedly, but how fortunate that you have meals in the freezer, money in the bank, and a great support system at home! This is a great example of how living frugally really works in day to day life - not just about saving a few cents on coupons but being able to have choices/options.

Organized another funeral reception at church and came home with a bag of fruit and a handful of bars. People don't always believe me when I say it's fun to work funerals but you really do get to know people working side by side - community building - but after 6.5 hours on my feet, I'm feeling it!!

Welcom Liv....you will find this a great site to be on!!

Stella I am thinking about you and all your family is going through...chrissieq is right how wonderful it is that your
frugal life style and close knit community is making it possible for you to help your sister. It is amazing with your
busy young family you are able to do this.

The last couple of days
--volunteered at the city run seniors home...really frugal as in no cost and a feeling of time well spent.
--Made $30.00 selling with a consignment store on ebay...stuff out of my house and money in my pocket.
--still eating from the pantry/freezer and fruit/veggies in season
--my birthday yesterday and it is a nice reminder how many people care for you....Dsil joined us here for lunch (long story)
but we used chicken bought on sale cooked with BBQ sauce (homemade) and cranberry sauce, rice and carrots for a really nice lunch.
Even sent her home with a extra meal, which she always seems to appreciate.
She bought me a tea pot for making drip tea and several bags of loose teas from a way too expensive a store...but she means well.
Is short of money all the time but, spends on really frivolous things she can't afford. Oh well there is not alot you can do to fix these things
her and I are the same age but, she has lived alone and is very set in her ways.
--I had let my hair grow longer in all one length thinking I would save on cuts and colours but, in reality it was harder to keep and very aging.
I had a hair cut today back to my shorter cropped cut and I am feeling very good about. Of course I went to the lady who works out of her house and
does not charge crazy prices.

Welcome, Liv!

Thanks for the crockpot cobbler recipe, Stella! It's apple season here so I look forward to trying it out!

School started last week so the past two weeks have been crazy. I've dropped the ball on bringing my lunch to work on a few days, but got back on track yesterday with a big green salad complete with cherry tomatoes and green pepper from our garden. I hard boiled a dozen eggs the other day so have those in the refrigerator. An egg made for easy protein to go with the salad. I normally keep peanut butter, honey, and rice cakes in my desk drawer for those times when I don't bring lunch from home, but finished off the jar of peanut butter and forgot to bring more so ended up having to buy lunch one day. Not my most frugal (or healthy) moment! I have been very good about bringing tea with me every day, though. So consistently that my students actually razz me for it!

When I started this new job back in May I was aching to buy some new clothes, but have managed to continue to talk myself out of that frivolous (and, truly, it would be frivolous) purchase for almost four months now. I have to give credit to the fact that I am just lazy and don't really enjoy shopping, but also I have just been diligent about keeping non-essential spending to a minimum.

We had a few hot, humid days, but now the weather has broken and we're enjoying having the windows open and no A/C running! Got the electric bill for last month: $8.33. Hooray for solar panels!!!

We picked the last of our blackberries and I cooked them down, added them to some homemade applesauce, and then put the concoction in the dehydrator to make fruit leather. Haven't tasted it yet this morning, but it looks pretty good! Hooray for cheap treats! Our apple trees are loaded right now so it should be a good apple-picking season. Not that I have any idea what going to do with all of them!!!

My dearly beloved helped out and made a big batch of corn chowder this week and we froze a bunch for quick and easy meals this winter.

Not much else to report, really. I know we have places that we could cut expenses further, but they would take some effort and we're just not there, mentally, right now. But I do feel like things have been improving so perhaps as we move into the fall we'll be able to make some more progress.

I do love reading about everyone else's successes, so please keep posting -- you are helping to keep me motivated!!!

Thanks for the reminder about hard boiled eggs, cdttmm . . . I am also falling short on the food front lately and that could be a good cheap way to have protein ready to go for lots of things - on a salad, on its yummy own, in an egg salad . . .mmmmm.

Not a particularly frugal week. Again. I was having some eye issues and it cost me $95 to find out it is simply an ocular migraine that cannot be treated. Though I am greatly relieved it was nothing more serious - that's a lot of money!

I am down to 1 pair of work pants so I got 2 new pairs at Kohl's. I tried on many different kinds until I found the ones that I really liked the fit. I spent more money than I wanted even on sale & with the 30% discount code. But I have looked and looked at Goodwill and haven't found any that I really liked the fit. Hopefully these will last a good long time. These are Lee Perfect Fit and they are stretchy enough that I can do my job comfortably.

Today I ordered my nieces wedding gift from her Kohl's registry. The wedding isn't til October 26th but I ordered today because the items were on sale & I had a 30% coupon code. I think I saved $68. Granted the stuff was over-priced to begin with. But I'll take it! And now all I have to do is find a nice card & gift bag and I'm all set. I also got her shower gift & the 2 shower game prizes I am supposed to provide this week. They were on clearance at work, plus my work & red card discounts. I will get the shower food on payday.

We went to watch Tyler march yesterday. It was such a beautiful Autumn day. Admission is only $5 each and we had dinner at the dining hall with T. There is a new policy that says parents eat free! Awesome! Got to see T in his element being greeted by friends right & left. It confirms to us yet again that while it isn't cheap - this really is the right school for him. At this time in his life, anyways.

Brought my lunches from home all week. Except for Wednesday when I made the emergency trip to the eye dr. I stopped at Wendy's on the way back to work :|(

But this is a new week & I will try much much harder to be frugal!

It's been a no spend day - returned 3 items to 3 different stores but mapped it out so I didn't backtrack. Went to a consignment store and emptied out 5 items (brought home 5 but some were Christmas that they will accept in October). Bagged up for donation the summer clothes I never wore. When DH got home we bagged home many, many items that he hasn't worn. Got in touch with a former coworker who makes/sells jewelry to give her jewelry display pieces that another coworker no longer used and gave to me (who has no use for them) so as of tomorrow, they are out of my house. Still working on house painting - scraped and primed 4 windows today - painting tomorrow.

Do have to take my car in tomorrow AM because I have a slow leak in a tire - otherwise I anticipate another quiet day.

Not so frugal week here. Our car is in the shop again, second time in as many weeks. And both times have resulted in us needing to rent a car for a week. We're not accustomed to that because for so many years we both worked from home so being down one car for a few days was inconvenient, but not impossible. Now a second car is pretty much a necessity. I feel like a wuss for saying that, but the solutions for getting along without two cars for several days or a week are pretty extreme. As in, one of us taking unpaid vacation time from an already less-than-secure job situation or me biking 54 miles roundtrip to work every day for a week. Okay, rant over.

As a result of the car repairs/car rental expenses, I'm going to do my best to tighten my belt even further. Not sure exactly what that will entail except for no longer buying an almost daily snack from the vending machine or cafe at work. It's generally been less than $2 a day, but right now that is $2 a day that we do not have. Not to mention, I could definitely go without eating a totally unhealthy snack every day!

I think I will also take the time to inventory the deep freezer and see what we can actually eat up over the next several days/weeks. I found a few containers of soup and corn chowder in there this week that we've consumed so it makes me wonder what else is lurking in there! A few freezer meals would definitely save a few bucks over the last minute trips to the grocery store that we seem to make with regularity these days.

The weather is supposed to be beautiful for the next few days so I'll also challenge myself to get some laundry out of the clothesline in the morning before I go to work so that we don't need to use the dryer for every load.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what else I can do this week (and every week!) to cut back, but this thread always gives me great inspiration so keep up the great work everyone and keep posted about your successes!

Put a load of laundry on the line this morning, and I have one out now for tomorrow. I have a blanket in the washer that I'll hang out before work tomorrow. Been taking lunch, but I'm buying at a fund-raiser tomorrow. $3 for lunch including a beverage, so it's still a pretty cheap lunch. cdttmm, I feel for ya about the car. We just ended up buying a new one. Thankfully, I was able to borrow DD's when I needed. Been gathering stale stuff from where-ever (Mom, co-workers) to supplement the chicken's diet. They aren't laying at the moment so it sort of feels wrong to buy more chicken feed, lol. And they like scratch.

I was proud of hubs and myself last night--we were both tired and looking toward an evening of processing a batch of our burgeoning tomato harvest, so ... he looked at me and said, "Just wanna go out to Sabor Mexicano for dinner?"

Instead, we chopped up some leftover chicken, added celery, onion and made chicken salad, threw it on some lettuce leaves, steamed some of our last green beans, and of course, some tomato slices. Voila! Cheap, fast dinner and it was all in the kitchen already. Probably saved at least $15.

Got the tomatoes finished by 8 p.m. Still had time for my hobby.

No drive and little out of pocket personal spending, we ordered out once, but we did have a new roof with the wood under the flashing replaced since the roof was done wrong at one point. The flashing and gutters were replaced with the protective mesh that keeps the gutters clear from debris. So this was a huge expense.

Happily though we used someone from Angie's list who got all A's from many customer reviews and they did a fantastic job and cleaned up very well too. The house looks great and now we won't have to worry about rotting wood and what that could work out costing us in the long run....

It doesn't feel like there have been many frugals lately, but I haven't posted for a while so there ought to be some:

- I am refinancing my mom's place (rental property). I wasn't planning to, but I learned I didn't need to bring DW's short sale and my (ha) income as a photographer into it. Closing costs will be bundled into the refi -- not the most frugal but I can think of better things to do with that cash right now -- and that and another $50 or so a month on the note will cut ten years off the mortgage.
- Shopping sales for treats and making sure the groceries we buy get used. This is working out quite well. I can't remember the last time I had to empty the fridge of science projects that started out as leftovers and raw vegetables.
- Got my Airvoice SIM card so I can try them out before we depart from postpaid cellular service. My locked phone so far won't unlock, so I'm waiting for yet another unlock code so I can give it another shot (more accurately, so T-Mobile can give it another shot. If they mess it up and brick the phone, it's their mess, not mine). One month -- 250 talk minutes or 500 text messages (two texts [in or out] count as a "minute") and 6.6 cents per MB of data (I use about 25 MB a month over the air; the rest is on Wi-Fi) -- is $10, no taxes. If the network coverage is there, it'll be great when it works.
- I made a list of the items I needed for my window-painting project. Turns out half of what I need was already in the house (woot!). No need to spend $$ on those things.
- Our stupid car passed 100,000 miles last week (while getting 51 mpg). I had promised myself I'd take it in to get it detailed (almost makes the car look brand new). I'm waffling now and wondering if I can (or will) DIY for less money. Or maybe have them do the interior, which has suffered for carrying stuff as if the car were a pickup truck, and I do the rest. Hmm...

Steve, a quick Groupon search turned up six local deals for detailing. Something to think about - you can get your treat but get it cheap . . .

We held out on some cosmeticky kind of work on DH's car, but the reality was that I was starting to entertain fantasies about replacing it, because it looked/felt junky. Once we fixed up all those, I haven't had those thoughts. So maybe a detailing isn't so unfrugal after all, if it can keep the consumerist beast from rearing its ugly head . . .