It has been a long time since I posted! The school year was incredibly busy, and truth be told, now that summer is here things do not appear to be slowing down any! But I thought I would at least take a minute to pop in and list some of my frugal savings this past week. I have not been keeping a list—need to get back to doing that, so these will be just the things that I can remember. 🙂
1. We had a frugal 8th grade graduation ceremony for our daughter. Our church has a number of homeschool families, and happily this year there was a mom who volunteered to head up a graduation program. She used to do it every year, but with starting back to work full time has had to step down from doing it and so far no one else has volunteered to step up and take it on. But since her son was graduating from 12th grade this year, and he wanted a ceremony, she took it on for this year which meant my daughter was able to participate and have a ceremony—yea! I was so happy for this blessing!
Things that we did to help save some money was our daughter wore the same robe that her older brother wore for his 8th grade graduation, eleven years previously. 🙂 His robe had been passed down to us from a friend, and then I passed it back for my friends youngest to wear, and then she passed it back to us and I parked it in a basement closet and actually FOUND it—always an accomplishment!
I took our daughter to JCPenney’s portrait studio for pictures. We already had a membership, so that meant no sitting fees and a coupon got us $4.00 a sheet pictures. Then the next week, I received an email coupon for .99 cent sheets, so I went ahead and ordered some wallet size sheets so we could include a picture in the invitations that we handed out.
We made our own graduation invitations. A friend gave us some card stock that matched the blue of the graduation robe perfectly, and we printed out on nice white paper the important information and fastened it to the blue. I ordered a box of invitation envelopes from Amazon, and with the wallet picture included I think the final product turned out very nice!
2. We have been eating from our garden. Our collards and our kale are both growing fantastic. Before too long the heat will probably do them in, but for right now we are using them in everything I can think of! We have used some of them in a stir fry with other veggies over rice, as well as made a “Green Mint Smoothie” out of some, which I normally make with fresh spinach, frozen bananas, and a drop of mint flavoring. But since I do not have any spinach growing in my garden I substituted fresh kale instead and it still tasted great! I started the collards and kale with leftover seeds that I had from previous years. I didn't think very many would sprout, because they were quite a few years old, but there were a lot more that came up than I expected!!!
3. Speaking of our garden, weeding is free exercise! And after the winter there were plenty of weeds just waiting to give me free exercise!
4. MOST of my garden this year was free. My little garden is a mix of 4x8 boxes that some are filled with perennial flowers, and others are used for growing veggies so do not have permanent plantings in them. During the winter months, a friend offered free raspberries that were taking over her garden area, and all I had to do was go dig them up. So off my daughter and I went, and moved some of the baby plants that were outgrowing the area that my friend wanted them in her garden. So one of my 4x8 beds has been given over to these free raspberries, and they are growing beautifully and even have berries on them!!! Another friend came to visit and brought me some “Christmas Lima Bean” seeds to plant. I had never heard of these beans before, but they sure were pretty and very interesting to look at! I read on line that they are considered actually a butter bean, and not a Lima bean, but I don’t care what they are—I just know they looked fun to grow! So they went in a section of our garden I refer jokingly to as the “back 40.” I had a "blog friend" offer some free watermelon seeds to any of her readers who would like some, and I gratefully requested some. These seeds are now planted and are coming up and are so fun to watch! I am excited to see what they will do! I planted two different types of tomatoes from old seeds. These I started inside the basement back in February. They had better germination than I expected, and I had extra plants that I was able to share. :)
5. I divided a perennial. One of the few plants I did buy this year for the garden was a purple day lily. My daughter was fascinated with the thought of a purple one, and I thought it would be fun as well. The little day lily was only $4.00 at Lowes, but looking at then plants I realized some of them actually had several plants in the same pot. I chose one that had four fronds in the pot, (not sure exactly what they are called, but there were four of them) so I purchased that one and at home I divided it so my daughter and I both have two day lily plants in our garden from that one purchase.
6. I purchased half off blueberry bushes. I "had" been planning on moving the three small blueberry bushes that I have, from the front part of the yard where they currently are to the fenced in garden part of our yard. When I originally planted them in the front, I didn't realize how many dear little deer lived in our neighborhood! Dear little deer that love feasting on blueberries for breakfast (smart deer!)! As the bushes are still rather small, I had told my hubby that I was going to dig them up and move them to the garden section. Well, THIS year is the first year that these three bushes are truly loaded with blueberries--and I mean really loaded, at least for as small as they still are. My husband expressed a desire that I just leave these where they are, and he is willing to try and fight the deer for the rights to the blueberries on them, and to go ahead and purchase new blueberry bushes to plant in the garden ares. I hadn't made up my mind "for sure" on that idea, as I still liked the idea of moving the plants already paid for--but when I was at Lowes the other day I found all of their berries were 50% off. Well, that was such a good price that I couldn't pass it up, and four new blueberry bushes came home with us! My husband is happy that the current bushes will not be moved, and I am happy that we got four new bushes for only $20.
Well, these are my money saving efforts from this past week! What are you doing to bless your family? I would love to hear about it!
~Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment