Frugal Friday Jan. 1, 2021

           Happy New Year!  Let's make it a great one!                                   🎈🎉🎊

Saturday:

~We had a snacky kind of day so we just ate appetizers.  Everyone needs a day like that!

~Jeff and I watched more James Bond movies that are playing on YouTube in December.

~We worked on a few projects around the house.

~We called my parents and had a nice phone visit with them for about an hour.

~We we able to video chat with Heather, Bradley and Isaiah and the boys showed us all their cool new stuff they got for Christmas.  Chris had to work, but we did talk to him on the phone.

Sunday:

~I made a lovely casserole with chicken, gravy and stuffing. We had green beans on the side and apple pie for dessert.

~Josh sent me a new picture of Tate before he went to bed.  Tate is just so cute!!!  I love having another little grandboy to ooh and awww over.

~Jeff and I hot tubbed and then watched a movie.

~We made a meal plan for the coming week using what needs to be used up first.

~Uncle Bob gave us some money for Christmas to go out and have a nice meal with our kids and grandkids who live near us.  Since the pandemic is going on, we decided to split the money between the three families so that everyone can order something to go from their favorite place.  Jeff and I decided that we are going to use the money to stock up on some treats that should last us through at least January.  We feel like this will spread the joy out even further. :)

Monday:

~Jeff and I headed into Pullman to deposit a generous check that my parents gave us for Christmas and to do a bit of shopping before the college students return next week which will most likely raise our covid cases even higher unfortunately.  It has been nice seeing them go down when they left but unfortunately, the hospitalization rate has gone up.

~We stopped at Walmart and put in a request for a refill on my medications.  They unfortunately could not get them filled before we were done with our shopping so they are going to send them to me.

~While at Walmart, we checked out the Christmas clearance section and found more of the smaller multicolor strands of lights for half off.  I bought 3 boxes of them.   They each cover 23 ft. and are indoor or outdoor ready.  Jeff wanted to add more light next year outside. I also found some fun edible cookie dough mixes (these will go to the grandboys here to make with their parents as a fun Winter time treat and activity), nut mixes and candy.  We found deli chickens marked down along with beer bratwurst, potatoes for $1 a bag, and some deli sliced roast beef...all on clearance.  We picked up another gallon of milk and some avocados there to round things out.

~Our next stop was Grocery Outlet and here is where I spent some of the money Uncle Bob gave us.  I bought a huge package of turkey slices for $1.97 that I will divide up into smaller bags so we can pull out just as much as we need for a week.  I don't want things going bad. We also got Jeff more tortilla chips so he can make nachos (2 big bags which should last us a month), 4 marked down to half price boxes of M&M Christmas candies (Jeff is taking these as treats for work except the one box that I will be using in some homemade trail mix), 3 heads of Romaine lettuce, 2 pizzas, some peanut butter and chocolate cookie dough, tortellini  and a bag of bananas.

~By this time I was getting really sore and tired (I got about 3 hours of sleep total) so we decided to use the last of the Uncle Bob money to buy some Chinese 2 entrées plus noodles or rice meals from one of our favorite little places.  Luckily they were back open after weeks of being closed.  Jeff finished all his once we got home but I only ate about half of mine so it can be a meal for another day.

~Dinner was a sheet pan dinner with a roasted russet and sweet potato hash that I laid the 5 bratwurst sausages over the top of.  I baked it, turning everything once, at 400F for 1 hour.  I served some roasted asparagus with this.  We had leftovers of the sausages, potato hash and the asparagus, so there is another meal there also.

~I checked online and noticed that Chris's Christmas gift from me had finally come in at the post office so I ran down there to get that.  While down town, I walked over to the library and picked out a few good books to read.  I know I said I was just going to read books I had here at home, but I want to help keep the numbers up for check outs at the library so they will not cut hours there.

Tuesday:

~Jeff and I finished up the leftovers from yesterday's meals for dinner tonight.

~I went through a seed catalog and dreamed of what my garden this coming Spring and Summer could look like (dreaming is very frugal!).

~The company that Jeff works for sent home treat bags with all their drivers.  We are enjoying the goodies!

~Josh sent me more pictures and videos of Tate.  He just keeps getting cuter and cuter and is becoming aware of more that is going on all around him.

~I repackaged the larger pack of turkey lunchmeat slices into 4 zip lock bags and then threw all those into a larger ziplock bag to help protect them from freezer burn.  They are now in our upright freezer in the garage.

Wednesday:

~Lots and lots of snow!  We had a snowstorm hit us and we ended up with about 9 inches of snow before it turned to rain and started to melt off late in the evening.  Jeff took my car with him to work since it has full coverage on it and the other 2 vehicles just have liability.

~I cooked up 2 small pork roasts in the crockpot.  When they were done I shredded them and decided to just add some BBQ sauce since the meat was a bit dry.  I forgot that my biggest crockpot cooks things much faster than my smaller ones.  I was able to divide the roasts up into 3 meals.  I will freeze 2 of them for the future.

~Jeff made us grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.  YUM!

~I watched some lighthearted videos on YouTube that were just uplifting and fun!

~My prescriptions came in from Walmart. They are so good about sending them and not charging me to send them.

Thursday:

~I worked on my Swagbucks points programs a bit.  I really do need to get back to doing that.

~Jeff and I stayed home and watched some movies on YouTube.

~We watched videos on YouTube as the world ushered out 2020 and welcomed in 2021.  Seattle's New Year's Virtual show was amazing!

Friday:

~We met Chris and Heather, along with the big boys at a park in the town between us to give Chris his gift and for Heather to give Jeff his.  We had drawn names for this past Christmas so we were able to get nicer gifts for one person rather than spreading out our budgets for the adults.  Chris loved the ring I got him and put it on immediately!  I am so glad!  Heather got Chris a really ice long sleeve moisture wicking shirt and some of his favorite candy bars.

~After that we ran into town to deposit Jeff's paycheck and then headed over to another big town to get a few things there and look for some new winter work boots for Jeff.  I also was looking for some phone cases for both our phones and asked Jeff if he would drop me off at Goodwill to see if I could find any there while he went to the sporting goods store to look at boots.  Jeff did not find any boots that would work for him but I found one phone case that would work for one of our phones and will keep a look out for more. I figured I saved about $12 on the case alone.  I also picked up a cat scratching Pad ($1.99), a really nice sugar bowl from The Pioneer Woman (which will be used in the bathroom to store tweezers, clippers, etc.), a beautiful leather purse to possibly resell ($7.99 and retails for $127), and a bag full of brand new crafting supplies that included paints, paintbrushes, origami paper and a few other items ($4.99).  Most of the crafting items will be a gift for a grandchild in the upcoming future who is amazingly creative and talented. Most of these were planned for purchases except for the purse, but I saved so much on the other things and I know I can make a good profit on selling it.

~We bought 4 pizzas for $2.50 each at Safeway after coupon) and had one for dinner and put the rest in the freezer.  We also picked up 2 extra large burritos at the Dollar Tree along with a 4 pack of food storage containers (I needed to replace some that I had used to package hot cocoa mix in to give away).

~We hot tubbed in the evening.

   So that is it for our week and the end of 2020 and the first day of 2021.  I had hope to post this earlier today, but ended up in a huge Fibromyalgia flare and in bed for a good part of it.  Such is life and I just try to keep a good attitude about it all because seriously, it is what it is and flares do and will come. 😉  The new year has started out with lots of rain and wind so we settled in for movies, naps and eating lots of comfort food today.  I am hoping that tomorrow will be a much more productive day around here but we shall have to see!  Be blessed!

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