Frugal Friday Wrap Up 5/27/16

 

   Sorry I am late getting this posted.  I realize it is now Sunday, but I my dad and brother were here Friday for a short visit and we had the family over that night for dinner.  We had a wonderful visit and the bed that they brought us is so comfy!  Now, without further ado, here are the frugal doings for this past week.

~Saturday was our town's big annual celebration.  The weather was looking bad but I was able to buy a few books at our library's book sale before the sky opened up and dumped massive amounts of water on us.  The paperbacks were .25 each and the hardbacks were .50 each.  I found an old copy of one of our community cookbooks that has recipes from many of our friends who had passed on now.
~Since it was dumping down rain, we came home and had a movie marathon afternoon/evening and raided the pantry, fridge and freezer to make sweet and sour chicken over rice and a nice fruit salad.
~I cut up another half a pepper and froze it, the other half was used in the sweet and sour chicken.
~Our son Chris invited us over for fresh crab and rockfish that he caught while on vacation on the Oregon coast.  There was so much crab left that he sent me home with half of it and with a package of rockfish.  Oh yes, we took over cookies and some Cheddar Bay Biscuit mix to add to the dinner that night. :)
~One of the local Dollar Tree stores received a new shipment of dvds and blu ray movies.  I picked up 3 of the children's ones and am thinking about going back and getting more since they have several of the Penguins of Madagascar series and my grandboys love those!  I already gave them the one the I bought.
~I made more Sourdough bread for Jeff's sandwiches to take to work.
~It has been raining quite a bit so I have not had to water the garden much at all.
~I entered a code in at InnovasianCousine.com towards a free product.

~I finally had enough points to cash in for another $25 Walmart.com gift card via Swagbucks.
~More of our bananas went to banana bread stage before we could eat them all so they were made into several loaves of yummy banana bread.
~We cooked up one of the pepperoni pizzas that I had bought at the Walmart deli for half price.  The grandboys love their pizza!  We had the leftovers for lunch the next day.
~Some of the volunteer lettuce was finally big enough to harvest.  I love being able to get tender lettuce right out of our garden.
~Our county library system has quite the selection of new books and movies this month.  I requested a few more of the newer items and a season of Downton Abbey to get caught up on.
~My sweet MIL is having to take things easy for a few weeks and was looking for some books to read to keep her occupied.  She loves the Amish type series so I gathered up a bunch of them that I have here for her.
~Tuesday we did our volunteer work and came home with a ton of groceries.  Some of the items were a bag of AP flour, a bag of whole wheat flour, a large corned beef brisket, lots of canned goods, pasta, bagels, rolls, juice, 2 dozen eggs, green split peas, crackers, coffee, tea, soap, jello, sloppy joe sauce, potato flakes and other items.  I figured that we have at least $150 or more in free groceries.
~I watched several shows online.
~I looked at the grocery ads online to find out what the best deals were on items we had on our list.  I was also able to scratch some things off our list since we received some of those items when we were doing our volunteer work. :)

~A dear friend, whom my hubby and I consider a sister and who is like a second mom to our boys, is up visiting this week. She has been trying to fit in everyone in the short amount of time that she has here.  I asked her when she wanted to come and visit with us and she chose to come for dinner, with wine included of course. ;) She and I have a long running joke about how every woman needs good wine and chocolate to make their life complete. ;)  And yes, I had chocolate cake ready for dessert too!
~I got an email from my mother telling me that she was sending over a bed skirt and a quilt she made for the bed that she and my dad are giving us.  My mother's quilts are amazing and I am thrilled to be getting another one.  I treasure them. :)
~Jeff and I did the big grocery shopping trip on Thursday.  While we were at Winco, I found large boxes of heavy duty aluminum foil clearance priced for .99 each.  I bought 4 of them.  That should get us through the rest of the year!
~The Dollar Tree had boxes of assorted sizes of the bowl covers that look like shower caps.  I love using those and was down to my last one here.  I bought 2 boxes of them and again, that should get me through the rest of the year since I was and reuse them over and over again.

~I cut more flowers from the garden (this time roses) and put them in a vase inside the house. :)
~I gathered more coupon inserts from the free midweek papers at the grocery store.
~Safeway had some really good deals on marked down products this week so I stocked up on things that I knew we would use.
~I finally put all the larger Lego blocks into a medium sized canvas tote box to make it easier for the little boys to find what they needed  and to make clean up time easier.  It keeps things neater and easier to store than having them in the huge zip lock bag.
~I repackaged the huge Costco sized bag of tortilla chips into smaller gallon sized ziplock bags.
~The whole family came for dinner on Friday since my Dad and brother are here for a quick visit.  I made a huge pan of homemade macaroni and cheese, I cut up a large watermelon I got on sale, my cousin brought a green salad and Heather brought brownies.  That is how we do frugal family meals here when we all get together. ;)
~Rosauers had their 2 pound loaves of medium Cheddar cheese on sale for $3.99 each.  I bought 4 of them and will shred up 2 and put those in smaller bags in the freezer, I used 1 in the homemade mac and cheese and the other will be used for sandwiches and snacks for the next few weeks.
~Since we already had 2 dozen eggs before we were given 2 dozen more when we did our volunteer work, I made breakfast for dinner for my hubby on Thursday night.  I cooked up a can of corned beef hash (from the pantry) and fried up 3 eggs to go with that for him.  He works so hard for us and needs the extra protein since he does such a physical job.
~I was again craving Chinese and Japanese food this week but did not want to spend the money going out to eat.  I fried up some pot stickers and the rest of the bag of some cole slaw cabbage mix with a little soy sauce.  I had that along with some sliced strawberries for dinner. :)
~I froze more overripe bananas to make banana bread.

 
   I hope you are all having a great Memorial Day weekend!