I will start the September Frugals.....

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.