Frugal Friday Wrap Up 6/3-6/9 2017

   

   It has been an interesting week here full of high school graduations and parties, time with family and friends and roller coaster weather. Our hanai son Lee and his girlfriend came home to see his sister graduate, so we got to have some time with them and I loved it!  One of my best friends who is more like a sister and is who we call our kids "other mother" was here for a visit too and she got to meet Rachel and Steven.  I think she enjoyed the cuddle time with him the most. 😉  Who doesn't love cuddling a snuggly newborn?  Our weather has been everything from scorching hot in the high 90 to the lows in the high 30's.  I think my gardens are confused.  I did manage to find ways to save money this week though and am praying for even better savings next week.


~Saturday we attended the local high school graduation and went to 2 parties afterwards.  We had dinner and got to visit with old friends at the parties.
~Sunday Jeff BBQed up some of the reduce priced bratwurst that I had found the previous week (yes, I froze them when I brought them home from the store) and I made a sour cream and dill potato salad with some sale priced potatoes.  Jeff also made some brownies and we had watermelon with it.  This made for a lovely dinner for us, Jaysn, Rachel and my friend Ronnie who was visiting.
~Ronnie brought me a lovely gift of a bottle of wine from the Napa Valley.

~We borrowed and watched some movies from the library.
~Most of the laundry was hung out on the line to dry earlier in the week before the rains came.
~I bought some plants at the local ACE Hardware store to replace the ones that the ants ate.  I thought I bought some flat leaf parsley, but it was really celery.  For the cost of 2 bunches at the grocery store, I will have 12 bunches of celery when they are ready.  I also bought 2 pepper plants that already have peppers growing on them (my plants started from seed are still tiny seedlings), a pretty columbine that is a new discovery for me (I have developed a love for them and they spread like crazy) and some basil (which has been nearly impossible to find around here).  I carefully looked for the pots of plants that had multiple plants in them instead of just a single plant.  More bang for my buck.
~I have been working on my points programs as much as I have time for.

~Books from the library are being read and new ideas learned.
~The overflow water from the swamp cooler was used to water the fruit trees.
~I watered the gardens in the evening.
~We found the game "Imagine If" for half price at Goodwill and a dvd.  The game will be given to some of our kids who love to have game nights at their home.  I already have one here.
~Two loaves of sandwich bread were made early Wednesday morning before the temps headed into the 90's.
~I harvested lots of rhubarb from the garden and cut and froze 12 cups of it for future use and stewed some for eating now.  I love cold stewed rhubarb on a hot day.

~A button came off a pair of Jeff's shorts, so I sewed it back on.
~Slugs have been eating the freshly sprouted bean plants so I have been out there picking them off in the morning.  Yucky job but I really do like my beans.
~I uploaded some coupons unto my Safeway.
~I did not realize how many free channels you can get on the Roku.  I have been discovering more and more of them.
~We were out of check registers for the checkbook so I printed off 4 more pages of them for my hubby.
~I printed off a gift card for free treats for Caesar from Petco and 2 gift cards for Texas Roadhouse that I cashed in from Swagbucks for.
~I signed up through Amazon.com to become an affiliate with them.  I am hoping that I can generate some income if people click through my links to do their shopping there.
~More of our favorite TV shows were watched online.

~Thursday was a wet and cold day by the afternoon so I pulled some homemade frozen split pea soup out of the freezer and got that heating up.  I then took some hot dog buns and topped them with some grated parmesan cheese and stuck them under the broiler.  It made for a nice early dinner for Jeff and I and I needed to use up some of the hot dog buns anyway.
~I harvested more rhubarb and shared it with my neighbor.
~Jeff watched a movie he borrowed from our Jaysn.
~I finally got the replacement squash plants in Friday along with the larger pepper plants, the celery plants, another columbine and potted up the basil.
~I needed comfort food on Friday so I made some Udon and Miso soup with shrimp.  I added some baby kale and green onion from the garden.

   Not a bad week at all.  Sometimes I feel like I repeat myself over and over doing the same things but you know what, those are the exact things that do help us save money.  They may not be big ticket items but if you consider how much it would have cost us to go see the movies in the theater instead of borrowing them or even buying each of them on dvd or bluray, we saved at least $60 right there.  Same thing with our watching TV shows online instead of having DISH TV which would cost us about $60 per month depending on what kind of deals they had running.  So that alone is $120 savings which will pay for one of our quarterly insurance payments that is due this month.  It's kind of like drops of water in a bucket...they may seem small, but together they all add up and fill that bucket.