December Frugals

Could it be?! Could it be?! I get to start the thread for only the second time ever. :)

We are going to deal with our leftover turkey today. I had hoped for enough meat for a soup, but I think I will only be able to make stock with what's left. That's ok, it will be yummy, we can put some chicken in it later on.

I have been researching how to clean up a pair of suede slippers I have. None of the methods online seem to be very promising, though I may try vinegar. Anyone know anything about this? Trying to avoid buying a specialized cleaner as they typically are used once or twice and then sit around for years. I did check to see if my FiL already has some. Will update if I make any progress.

Also have been researching how to reupholster a chair for several weeks. My DSiL gave us a chair with great bones and crappy upholstery. To her credit she did include a slipcover, but I don't like it. My sister got me a screaming deal on fabric, only $12 for 8 yards at a thrift store, but now that I have it in hand, I think it is not quite right for upholstering - it has a bit too much stretch/give and is a bit too lightweight - I think it will be worn out in a few short years. So now I am researching how to do a tailored slipcover out of the fabric instead. I have a few books on request from the library to hopefully learn how to do it.

I realized yesterday that my mom and dad have a few dressers sitting around that would work well for the baby's clothes. Mom said it would be ok to take one. One needs painted (of course this is the one I want :) ) and one would work well as-is, but seems kind of tippy. Nobody needs to get squished. So anyway, now I just have to call my dad and see if he is ok with us painting the one. It's in great shape structurally and terrible shape cosmetically, but it's his childhood dresser, so I feel we need to be certain before proceeding.

Wow, too long of a post. In a post-y mood today, I guess. :) Hope everyone had a nice long weekend!

After some decidedly not-very-frugal days, some less-expensive activities:
- No one wanted the turkey carcass after family Thanksgiving, so I took it home and stashed it in the freezer for some future date.
- DW's sister, in town, wanted to go shopping at a particular grocery store and brought home a couple of rotisserie chickens. She pulled meat off the bones and was about to toss the container with the remains when DW and her mother noticed how much chicken was still there. They "rescued" the bones for me and I will stash them in the freezer, too. There's enough there for a couple of rounds of chicken soup.
- No-drive day today for me.
- I had some plant trimmings and branches left over from the county's collection period. The local site does not accept them. But our garbage hauler will, (if we put them in the biodegradable bags which the county won't let us use), at no charge if we keep it to two bags per pickup. I can do that. A little diligence each Tuesday for a couple of weeks and it's all done without a trip across town.
- I found some low-priced LED bulbs which could fit in the new living room lamp. Right base, dimmable, everything -- except for being short enough. They won't fit into the sockets for the shade getting in the way. >8) Back they went....

Nice weather today, so I have laundry on the line. And finally, a no-drive day. Not no-spend, as I did some online ordering and bill paying, but staying home is WONDERFUL! :)

Still working on our expensive grocery haul from last week--we spent $290 for Thanksgiving groceries for 8 people. We still have all the "Scottish breakfast" stuff because we never had a big breakfast, plus leftover turkey, lasagna, pumpkin and apple pie, and a flan my DDIL's mother made.

DH already made the turkey soup from the carcass and leftover vegetables and we sent two large jars full with my kids and we still have a huge amount. There is also a good amount of turkey on a second turkey we made. (DH likes to make one turkey to carve and one turkey for presentation, which we use for left-overs after Thanksgiving).

I didn't drive and I didn't spend today, except for picking up DH a pack of cigars. I even offered the kids gas money and they refused it.

Used the carcass and left over turkey for tonight's soup dinner - probably enough for at least 3 meals!

Walked to Walgreens for bubble mailers that I use frequently for shipping etsy sales - .39 instead of 3.29! - but you are limited to 3 each purchase. I'm thinking I'll hit every Walgreens in my travels this week to stockpile.

- a no-spend no-drive day, but that's really not something I can celebrate as frugal, because so many of my days are the same.
- working on recycling the Thanksgiving dinner leftovers, rather successfully.
- got online this morning with the intent of doing two (for ourselves) Christmas gift purchases, but saw that one item/website had it at a 60% discount tomorrow morning, and the other had free shipping for everything on Cyber Monday. So on my list to do tomorrow morning. Might as well save the money by waiting.

Well my DH has had off since this past Wednesday which has been so nice. We didn't go out to eat or really go anywhere. I had all no drive days. He had drive days and bought items we needed to finish Christmas decorating. Bought the bulk of my gifts where they had 30% off and free shipping! Had two shopping coupons I used which saved money. Overall I feel very good about the whole shopping experience that we really saved.

Fidgiegirl, when my kids were born I had an old dresser that I painted white and put cute knobs on the drawers. Kinda old info as my oldest is 35! but those are the kinds of things that enabled us to retire at 55.

Hi, everyone! I need to get back to posting. We've had several rounds of colds/flus/ear infections around here, plus DH and I are both in physical therapy. But it seems we are all feeling a little better, so I am hoping to be able to post regularly.

I REALLY need to return to the frugal mindset at things have been a little crazy money-wise. Our vacuum cleaner broke over the weekend and was going to cost a whole lot of fix, even if we did it ourselves. SO...we decided to bite the bullet and get a new one. I told DH I was sick to death of cheap vacuum cleaners...we've had like five throughout the course of our ten-year marriage. Some of them were used to begin with, but still...I am tired of constantly replacing vacuums! So I insisted on a good quality one this time. DH braved the crowds the day after Thanksgiving and got a "screaming deal" (ha--love that, fidgie!) on a Dyson. Then we used our card for an extra 5% off. Oh my word! I LOVE IT! It works so well and it small and lightweight. I think I will be vacuuming a lot more in the future. I always hated dragging my huge, heavy vacuum up the basement stairs before!

I also started Christmas shopping for DH over the weekend. I found all six seasons of a show he loves for $30. We will get many months of enjoyment out of it, and it is cheaper than cable! I think his other gift is going to be a monthly donation to the Decoder Ring Theater. They produce film noir-type radio dramas that are a lot of fun. It is free to listen. Anyway, when you donate, you help keep them afloat and get access to high-quality downloads as well.

Finally, I spent a good chunk of change on a Little People Nativity set for the kids. I'm not sorry, though, because they play with it together and DD is already talking more about Baby Jesus than Santa (which was sort of my intent all along). Our faith is important to us, and we don't want it to get lost in the holiday.

Yesterday we were coming home from visiting my dad and resisted temptation to eat out. We just came home and had leftovers. Dinner was at home as well.

Last night I resisted temptation to order some clothes from Coldwater Creek. It was a great deal--you can buy $50 vouchers for $25 on Groupon through the ebates link and earn 4.5% cash back. Then you can use the vouchers to shop online, where everything is 50% off with free shipping. You can go through ebates or shopathome on that purchase, too. They had some cute things, but I am broke! Plus, most of it is dry clean only. That doesn't work very well with kiddos! :-)

I am super jealous of all the bird carcasses you have sitting around, Steve! I don't have any in my freezer right now, but I do have a turkey I got for like 20 cents a pound. So I'll make him up some time in the future and then make stock! :-)

Oh, and fidgie, here is a slipcover tutorial I had saved. Maybe it will help you, too:

http://www.thenester.com/2010/03/how...lipcovers.html

Good to see you, Kat!! Well done resisting Coldwater Creek. Thanks for the slipcover link! I followed it to another link with an ebook . . . hmmm . . . might be worth it!

My frugal today is all about a MN snowstorm. I had to work my one day a week job so I took the bus rather than face a very slow drive. Here's the frugal - took the bus home, turned around after grabbing a coat that my daughter had ordered on line, back on the bus to take it to her (super cold coming in the next day or so) - that took 2 bus routes - then home again - all on one pass transfer!!! I love the bus but especially during winter storms!

Oh my! It's getting COLD here. Going down to the single digits. Unusual here. Folks here aren't really prepared for that sort of thing. That means some high utility bills no matter how frugal we are trying to do to keep it on the down low.

No drive, no spend day - cold here so I walked to the library which is so close to my house I would have had to drive a few miles to warm the car's engine up. Worked the book sale and, despite the cold, we had a good first day. May run an errand or two tomorrow just to start/warm the car after 2 days sitting in the garage.

Not doing too good frugally. Ian's laptop died so we replaced that. Well, at least it was less expensive than Ty's new trombone lol Also had to replace the blower motor for the heater in my car.

Did get 2 new belts for the boys and a new bra for myself for free using Kohl's cash plus the free $10 they gave me. Also got a nice Yankee Candle votive set and some groceries for free using Meijer Mperks. The votive set will be my gift for the family gift passing game on Christmas Eve. Today I got DH 3 crystal light's for free between sales & coupons.

Tomorrow it's church & a visit with Deja. Otherwise we'll be at home. Not spending money.

Thursday I had the day off and stayed home and in my pj's most of the day.

For dinner we are using the last of the bl/sl chicken breasts and left over rice. Well I am having one of the few remaining potatoes. The guys are eating the rice.

Did okay this week. Made a big pot of beef stew that allowed me to use up some odds and ends. I usually add some wine, but I didn't have any, so I just made it without instead of running to the store for some. Still good!

I decided to discontinue physical therapy for now as it is not helping and is very expensive (about $40 a week). Will re-evaluate the need this spring/summer.

Completed an awesome Target trip. Got tons of diapers and wipes. Stacked coupons and Cartwheel and left with a 20 gift card to boot. I just did a deal online that got me 4 pairs of jammies for the kiddos for $4 each (shipped!). This includes a robe for DD, who has been asking for one. Nice jammies are hard to find used around here.

Went to Gymboree today and was delighted to find 7 packs of children's underwear for $1.99!!! I bought a bunch for the kiddos to grow into and some extra for our local women's shelter.

I joined an online swap site and am super stoked that I was able to trade some freebies and old clothes for some new Converse shoes for DD, a blue ray for DH (one from his Christmas list) and a $20 itunes card. Woot! I am in talks with another person for some fabric. Awesome way to declutter, get some things I need, and help someone else get the things they need!

DD's stuffed Rudolph from Build a Bear broke last week. The nose wouldn't light up anymore. So we took it back to the store and they replaced it for us for free. Awesome customer service, and DD is over the moon.

This (past) week's frugals:
- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday were no-drive days.
- Thursday was my birthday, so dinner was free (for me :))
- Christmas shopping: found on ebay a slightly-used copy of a book my niece wants and found a deal-of-the-day (70% off) on something DW has often said she wants (and will use)
- Got several meals out of the rotisserie-chicken soup I made earlier this week (cost us only to buy a rutabaga; the rest was all food we had on hand)
- Had both our furnace and the one in our rental property inspected (good thing considering the below-zero temps this week); I always ask for (and get) a discount on the total price because the properties are across the street from each other; there's no expense to get the truck and the tech from one place to the other

Kat, what is the swap site? Sounds intriguing. Well played at Target.

We drove up to my mom and dad's yesterday and dropped some stuff and also picked up the dresser that we are going to paint up and use, so that was free.

Off to Costco today to stock up; it's been a while, and some of our Costco staples are low or out. I did buy a $50 Costco card from my mom that she'd received from someone, but she isn't a member so it was pretty worthless to her. Now she can use the $50 for something else.

I am experimenting with different rice and bean dishes for my breakfasts, mostly in the crock pot, and I must remember that even though it is an extra step to do the rice separately, it is soooooo much better. I don't even like rice done in the crock pot - why do I keep doing that?! It's not like it's a big effort to make rice on the stove.

P.S. Happy bday Steve!

Yesterday we ended up staying home all day. Overslept & missed church and then decided not to go see Deja. I expect to go tomorrow instead. So no drive & no spend.

Today I picked up an extra 1 1/2 hours at work. yay! Got 2 9.9 oz bags of mint M&M's for $.34! Those'll be nice for Christmas.

DH wanted to go get Chinese for dinner. Instead I fried some ham slices. Ian & I had the last 2 potatoes. DH made hot ham & cheese sandwiches for himself.

Not a whole lot of frugals happening over here, but I'll share the few that I have! Ate up the last of the soup that was leftover from Thanksgiving. And ate up the salad greens that were rapidly approaching the end of their edible life. Took home a huge bowl of leftover tortilla chops from an event at work last week. We ate them with corn chowder from the freezer. Lots of food related frugals!

My brothers and I agreed that we would not exchange Christmas gifts this year. We used to set a dollar limit, but now I'll save myself another $50 by not having to buy anything at all. The three of us will buy a joint gift for our mom and that will likely be it.

Coordinated my workout at the gym with my drive home from work so saved about 25 extra miles of driving today.

It's the little things, people!

Thanks, Kelli!

A couple more frugals:
- DW's SiL returned home from a week's stay with family south of town; we inherited the sweet potatoes and kale she did not use up. The sweet potatoes will be used for dinner tonight and the kale will become kale-chip snacks.
- I'm finally getting around to the detailing I "promised" my car when I hit 100,000 miles. Instead of a full-blown detail, however, I'm settling for a "Gold" wash and an interior cleaning at a staffed car wash I've used before -- and since it's my birthday week, the wash is free ($21.99 value, they say). So instead of spending $100 even with a Groupon, I'll spend around $20 and get 80% of what I wanted.
- A semi-frugal: DD and a niece-by-marriage and I all celebrate December birthdays. A local casino offers a free bingo session during the birthday month, so we went down this weekend and had fun, though we didn't win a dime (the couple niece had invited, however, won $350 on their very first bingo visit :0! ). Niece's dad even picked up the tab for dinner, so all we were out was a couple gallons of fuel to get there and back (and a few gray hairs from driving on these roads...)

Sounds like it was a fun bday celebration.

And I bet I know which car wash you are going to :) And if I do, I betcha you'll be happy with the results. :)

DH and I had a bit of a wild frugal lately, though I just burned it all up in gifts for him for Xmas. We bought some awful sweaters and the most horrible Xmas kitsch we could find at a thrift shop in my hometown, the one with the best prices, and we decorated the heck out of those puppies and have been selling them on eBay. We've made all our money back and then some - $10, $20, $30 or even $40 per sweater. They are pretty awful! That's why people wanted them, I guess!!

Nonfrugal: a lunch out today.

Kelli, that is hysterical. But way to think outside the box on money making! lol

I fished some nice Christmas cards out of my card cache, and made others by sandwiching miniature quilt blocks (that I made) into picture-frame cards I got at the Dollar Store. Total outlay: $1.

We stocked up on some food, household goods and Christmas presents at Sam's Club during their open house weekend so we didn't have to pay a membership fee to shop there.

So far I am at $360 for the month on sign up bonuses.

I used a grocery store coupon for $10 in free groceries from Fresh and Easy.

We signed up for the ACA. Our portion of the premiums will go down over $2,100 a month over the policy we have now for for better coverage and lower out of pocket and lower annual maximum costs.

We have been getting better at stockpiling food on sale. The new little freezer and convection oven help. The convection oven cooks any meat from frozen without defrosting. We roasted Cornish hens the other week that were frozen solid without defrosting and they turned out quite tasty.

Hi all,

- Big discount package of chicken in the crock pot, turned into shredded BBQ chicken. That will be nice evening meals.
- Did a presentation today and made $100 for it.
- Need to do meal planning tonight. I skipped last week thinking "we have plenty of stuff," and we do, but the main benefit we're getting is to be prepared. When we are tired, it is ready to go and we don't have to think too hard about it. That was the problem last week - we had enough food, but hadn't planned ahead for making it (defrosting, etc.). Lesson learned.

How 'bout everyone?

Hey Kelli: I'm glad someone is doing something frugal, because I certainly haven't done much lately. I feel like this has been a real spendy month for me, even though I'm not much of a Christmas person. Right now, it appears that our end of the month reckoning will be a negative number, so I'm challenging myself to get that number down (or up?) as much as possible if not eliminate it completely. We did have some medical expenses and other unavoidable items, but we also did some extravagant stuff like buy crazy-expensive theater tickets (Book of Mormon in April!)
I'm doing a bit of year-end reflection on accomplishments and where we fell short, and what our targets will be for next year. I think we would do well to make some of our numbers and milestones more concrete, rather than just save as much as we can and make our large expenditures when we decide they can be postponed no longer. Replacing my 1995 Saturn SL1 will be the big goal for 2014.
I did get an e-mail from Best Western saying that I had almost 10,000 points in their program that could be redeemed for gift cards or other awards. That was from stays at a hotel we like which used to belong to the BW chain, but no longer does, so I was able to get a $25 Amazon card and make a charitable donation with the balance of the points, which was kind of a neat surprise.

Book of Mormon! Jealous!! Hang in there rosa, there are bound to be those months. :(

Your Best Western experience reminds me that I have been wanting to switch one of our rewards cards (airline miles) into a reward that we will use more often (cash :) ). Advice? I think I will start a new thread as well.

This is turning out to be a bad month for frugals... Christmahanukwanzakah for various family and friends, and four birthdays (including mine). But...

- In shipping off some Christmas presents, I was able to fit the goodies into a slightly larger box, which saved money over buying a second flat-rate box.
- I did the week's grocery shopping down the street rather than drive to the coop. It was a light week; time to get the freezer emptier. One purchase was salad-in-a-box which had already started to spoil two days after I bought it and two days before its use-by date. Back it went. The cost was too much to ignore.
- I filled out the paperwork for health-care reimbursement; that'll be several hundred dollars to us when it comes back.
- I found out the used iPhone I bought on ebay is actually unlocked. Phones labeled "unlocked" on ebay typically sell for $75 more than I paid, so ... bonus! Maybe more lucky than frugal... Our $80 monthly phone bill is going to go down to under $30 a month, without giving up anything. I also found a long-lost gift card for iTunes that I can use to buy iPhone software if I can't find something free that I can use.

I found out a used bookstore near me buys books and went by there with a big box today. They offered $21 in store credit, so I picked up some books for my daughter.

Ate leftovers at home, haven't eaten out today.

Okay, one more:

I'm late on paying bills this month. When I went to finally deal with them today, I realized I will end up paying a late fee on my credit card (ouch) and that this was the last day to avoid a late fee for my mortgage payment. When I called the bank to see if I could pay over the phone, they said I could, but it would be a $20 service charge, though paying online would be free. I automatically froze up at the thought of trying to figure out how to make an online payment, but I had a dim memory of doing it in the past and it being really easy. Well, lo and behold, I had saved all relevant user names and passwords in my phone, and it took like 3 seconds and I saved myself not only the $20 service charge, but the $90 late fee.

I know this seems small, but this is the kind of stupid thing I would blow money on in the past, so figuring out how to solve this problem in the most frugal way was a big one for me!

I haven't been posting much for frugals lately because I feel like all of my frugals are getting to the point where they are simply my daily habits. Hooray!!! But there are obviously places where I can still improve so I will try to keep focusing on those. Overall this has been a very informative year when it comes to small frugals. Back in January or February, I think, I made a point in the monthly frugals thread that I wasn't going to buy any more lip "stuff" until I used up what I already had. Well, guess what? I'm still using stuff up! I haven't bought anything this year and along the way was gifted with a single tube of natural beeswax lip stuff, but otherwise I am still working from the same stash I had back at the beginning of 2013. Wow, how is it that I ended up with such a stash of something so ridiculous? Same goes for hair styling products. I've not bought since back in December of 2012, I think, yet I feel that I've barely made a dent in what I have on hand. Gah!!! Now neither of these small changes have made me wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but obviously I was just spending little amounts ($5, $10, $15) here and there for NO GOOD REASON!!!

Other frugals have mostly been around free food. We always have something happening at school where food is provided. It's hit or miss as to whether everything will get eaten, so when appropriate, I've been grabbing some of the leftovers and bringing them home. I always first try to find some starving students to feed, but if that option has already been exhausted then I have no qualms about bringing home 4 bagels and a container of cream cheese the way I did yesterday. Or the two giant bowls of tortilla chips like I did last week.

Final sort of big frugal, our vacuum cleaner stopped working. I thought it was finally time to replace it, but it turns out that a belt had simply come loose. A quick fix and now we are back to vacuuming.

That's all for now. Would love to hear from some other folks about their frugal endeavors this month!!!

Free lunch today, for the same reason cdttmm. The restaurant that our event organizer contracted with made an error in their order and brought SO MUCH food! So we all had some and it was a nice treat.

Time to get my car fixed again :( Something with the suspension in the front end, and I'm finally going to spring for my hood latch to get fixed. I can always get it to close, but it takes finesse. As I stood at the gas station refilling my wiper fluid (emergency, couldn't see to get home) I imagined a screaming baby in the back seat and knew I wouldn't be able to get that hood closed on the first, second or third try . . . eek. So whenever I get it in for that front end thing I will finally have the latch done. I'm sure the cable is just stretched out.

Scored a deal on Chex at the grocery store, so stocked up. Thinking of resurrecting a price book, there is an app that I could use . . . anyone keep one?

Worked at the cafe today and had a great lunch then went to church to serve dinner - the plan was to feed 100 only 65 showed so there was a ton of left overs. I brought home food for a healthy sized meal for DH and self as well as my all time favorite corn muffins. All the volunteers had plenty to take home as well as lunch for staff for 2 days.

Feel like I've been grocery shopping a lot lately in anticipation of the holidays but I think as much as big meal plans, I've been adding to the stockpile.

Just have to say, don't do any online shopping under the influence of Vicodin. Yark!

The drive belt in my dryer broke a few days ago - ordered the part and installed it using the repair manual I bought the last time I fixed it. $20 and a bit over an hour in effort, including ordering the part.

by paying attention to the newspaper ads got a free rotisserie chicken. I was not impressed, it was small for the normal price of $7.29 We eat little meat so I am not used to these prices.

DH had surgery and I packed food for the day. I got to sit outside in the sun to eat, made a long day much more pleasant. Also had food for him for the way home. He was starving of course and we probably would have stopped otherwise. He is doing well.

I am so enjoying a low-key and fairly frugal holiday season. We spent yesterday cross-country skiing. A frugal activity for us since we own all the equipment and so simply had to drive to the state reservation and go! We took our dogs with us and skied more than 5 miles, which was a good first outing of the season. We came home and enjoyed some leftover rice and beans from the day before and watched several episodes of Dr. Who from the most recent season. We're working our way through the entire show since the 2005 reboot before the start of the new season.

Today the weather is so warm and rainy that most of the snow will be gone by tonight. So we'll go to the gym this afternoon so that I can go to my usual Sunday afternoon Tae Kwon Do class and we'll do some work around the house. I'll probably take advantage of this warm spell to set out and fill the bird feeders, too. Another fairly frugal hobby of ours: feeding and watching the birds during the winter months.

Several months ago I ordered some art prints. But they were odd sized and I just knew I would need to have them custom framed-->$$$. But Friday DH and I went looking at mattes and frames at Hobby Lobby and lo and behold we found perfect frames and mattes. With a bit of trimming, it all went together for about 1/4 what custom framing would have cost. :D