Thank you!

Hi Everyone!

Just wanted to update everyone on how my daughter's fundraising went for hurricane relief went!  I know I have been talking about it quite a bit, both on this blog as well as on other social media and in real life as well.  Alison had so many wonderful supporters who sponsored her playing in the Play-a-Thon, and even total strangers that supported her!  She was overwhelmed with the response to her video asking for support, and therefore she wanted to also make a follow-up "Thank you" video, both to share details of how the event went as well as to express her gratitude.  So that being said, here it is:

And I want to also express my own "Thank you."  Thank you for demonstrating to these children that they are NOT too young to help.  That they are NOT too young to make a very real difference. That in this world filled with tragedy, there are kind and good people out there who do what they can to make a difference.

~Susan

Frugal Friday! November 10-16, 2019

Howdy Frugal Friends!

How was your week?  Mine was good, on many accounts!   One of the most exciting parts was that on Sunday my daughter had her “Hope Twinkles” Play-a-Thon, which was a charity fund raiser to raise monies for hurricane relief in the Bahamas.  Specifically, a school in the Bahamas which suffered damage from the hurricanes, and some of the teachers lost their entire homes, as well as some of the student families the same.  The school, while damaged, is not damaged so much that they cannot operate—yet most of the student’s families are unable at this time to pay the tuition for their child to attend school.  The school does not want to refuse the children coming to school.  At this time in their lives, they need the steady, security of school even more than ever.  Yet, of course the school is unable to operate without any tuition money coming in.  SO—when my daughter’s music teacher learned about this school, Grand Bahama Academy, it became the focus of this year’s charity fund raiser.  This is the third year that “Hope Twinkles” has happened, and each year it has grown larger than the year before.
Hope Twinkles Play-a-Thon

The first “Hope Twinkles,” the children raised money for Hurricane Katrina relief.  Last year, they raised money for a school in Santa Rosa, California which was destroyed by the terrible fires.  And then this year, of course, was for Grand Bahama Academy hurricane relief.   With the Play-a-Thon, the children all solicit pledges from people who agree to either sponsor them for how long they play, or simply make a donation.  Last year, my daughter played for SEVEN HOURS that one day!  She knew that the longer she played, the more money she would be raising for the Santa Rosa school, and in her heart she wanted to raise as much as possible!  This year, however, while her heart was the same—she has suffered from a terrible tendonitis attack since last May, so she was not able to play as long as she normally would. In fact, her physical therapist told her that she was allowed to play for two hours, and that was it! 

So she did the best she could in fundraising, and decided to create a video this year which explained what the children were doing.  My niece set up a GoFundMe page which linked the video, and my heart was so touched as my daughter received some donations from people that were total strangers to her!  She also had several people mail in donations, marking her as the child they were sponsoring.  What a blessing!  The final numbers are still to be determined, as the music teacher has given the students until November 22 to collect and turn in all of their pledges, but from the numbers we have heard so far, the children have raised more than they have the previous two years!  I will be sure and update when I know more!  

But on to other frugal activities:  

*I accepted two boxes of bananas that my very kind nephew offered me!  We live just down the road from the college my nephew is attending, and evidently there had been some food leftover from a weekend event that the college had hosted.  The school was giving the food away for free, to whoever wanted it.  My nephew called me and asked me if I had any room in my freezer, as he knew I have an upright freezer.  I said that I did, and he brought over two large boxes of bananas!  We were delighted!  We have been enjoying them by indulging in smoothies several times this week, as well as banana ice cream, a cookie recipe that is sweetened with bananas (more similar to muffins, really, than cookies), as well as making home made granola which is also sweetened with bananas (as well as dates).  So as you can see, we can use up quite a few bananas, in a short amount of time!  

*I was able to use several Kohl’s coupons and order four pairs of wool socks from their web site at a price that works out to be $3.14 each pair.  I will use two of these for myself, and gift two of them to my daughter in her Christmas stocking.  They aren’t the Smartwool brand that I have been impressed with after trying, but the price was good and it will be nice to have a few pairs of wool socks instead of just one pair.

*We had a termite inspection done.  I consider this frugal because it can save MUCH money and grief if the termites decide to make lunch of your house!  And since we live in the South, termites are quite prevalent around here!  In fact, one of my hubby’s co-workers DID have the unhappy discovery of termites eating up part of his house!  We keep our house under a contract for termites, which works basically similar to insurance.  As long as we pay our contract to keep it active, if our house is discovered to have any termite damage, the company will repair the damage at no additional cost to us.

*I bought two books which will become Christmas gifts, as well as a covered casserole dish and an adorable three miniature milk bottles in a metal container at a thrift shop using my gift certificate from being a volunteer there.  After all the holiday decorations are packed away, I will use the milk bottles to hold flowers, either artificial in the Winter, or real in the Summer.

*I bought six silicone molds at half off at JoAnn’s Fabric Store.  I will use these for an Art project that I am doing with my daughter in our homeschool.  They will be long lasting as well, as they do not get used up with use, so we will have them for a good while.  My husband’s employer has some monies that they reimburse us for our homeschool expenses, up to a certain amount, so I will turn in this receipt and will be reimbursed for the entire expense.

*I ordered a Christmas present for our cat, using a $5.00 coupon.  Yes, a present for the cat!  But he is a very sweet and very old cat, and my husband—it REALLY was him, even though this is generally my pussycat—my husband started sending me links for heated cat beds, because our cat is so old—19 years best as we know, as he was a stray— and telling me that Pumpkin needs a warm bed because he is old and arthritic.  I did some looking around, and found a bed that was 50% off of the regular price, and was able to use the $5.00 coupon on top of that.  When I saw that I did not have the option of shipping it to the store to pick up, and I was going to be charged shipping to my house, I called the customer service number and simply asked if there was any way that I could receive free shipping.  I figured it never hurts to ask!  And I am glad I did, as the agent said they could happily do that for me, so it is on it’s way!  And if, by any chance, Pumpkin does not care for his new bed, I can return it to the local store for a refund.  I hope he likes it though!

Well, that’s it for my busy week!  What did YOU do to save money and bless your family?  Thank you to all who have shared, as I really love learning and hearing about what others are doing!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! November 3-9, 2019

Hi Everyone!

How was your week? Ours was good! It seemed like there were a lot of ways to save money this week, which is always a good thing!  And I have been writing down some of my activities anyway, so I can remember them a bit better, which is also good!

So here we go:

*I made home made pizza. It is not hard at all, but I confess that I kinda forget about it so do not make it super often. My husband and daughter would not complain if I made it more often, I am guessing, based on how many compliments I received on this meal this week!

I made it with white whole wheat flour for the crust, and piled on the veggies including zucchini, artichoke hearts, onions, olives, mushrooms, etc. I do not eat dairy, but for me anyway, I no longer miss cheese on pizza when I am loading it up like this! And I feel so much better, so that is what counts!

*My green tomatoes are ripening wonderfully! Yay! Go green tomatoes! 

I have been making sure we are using the tomatoes as they ripen. One meal I made with them this week was Garden Stack Potatoes. Basically, a baked potato baked and cut open, then layered with corn, green onions, shredded carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, red bell peppers, and a homemade “cheese” sauce that is made out of raw cashews or sunflower seeds, pimentos, lemon juice, garlic and onion powder, and salt. It doesn’t taste at all like “real” cheese, but we like it!

*I received a gift certificate for our local thrift store as a Christmas present since I am a volunteer there, and my daughter also received a gift certificate. They do not expire, so we will be able to use them slowly over time, as we find things that we need and are the right size.

*I stocked up on avocados at Aldis for 49 cents each. I have not seen them at this price for a long while now, so I bought extra to freeze. 

This is my first time freezing avocados, so we will see how it goes.  But I bought frozen avocado chunks at Aldi's this summer, and loved the convenience of being able to take just a little bit out of the freezer for my recipe, and not having to try to time the ripening avocado to when I made a meal, so we will see how it goes.  As they say, this is a test! 

*I bought some flowers for just $1.13 each! I wasn't looking or planning on adding more flowers to my garden right now--it IS, after all, November!  And the weather is a bit chilly for planting stuff in the dirt right now. . . but when I was at Walmart and found Stonecrop--which is a perennial flower, at only $1.13 instead of $7.00 each, I figured what did I have to lose?  So I bought six plants, and quickly planted them in the garden on one of the last warm days we had.  We will see how they hold up over the winter! 

*I traded in my daughter's blouse and bought the same exact blouse in a larger size at a consignment shop! This was hilarious to both my daughter and  myself. . . she has had this bright pink blouse.  It is not exactly her favorite color, though does look nice on her.  Well, she was growing out of it and it was beginning to be a bit tight on her.  We went consignment shop shopping to try and find some solid color blouses which she needs to wear for orchestra playing, and we found the EXACT same blouse for her in the next size up!  It is a Banana Republic brand, and I looked up online this blouse was $68.00!!!  At the consignment store they wanted $10.00--but then my daughter suggested that we take her too small blouse with us and see if they would take it in trade, and they did!  They gave us a $5.00 credit for the blouse we brought in, and I already had store credit from trading other clothes previously which paid for the rest of the new blouse cost.  Yay!  I told her it was her destiny to wear bright pink! ;) 

*I accepted some leftover spaghetti and sauce from my sister, so that was a free lunch for us today as well as free lunch for tomorrow, as we still have some left! 

*I also sent some Christmas presents with the same sister--who will be traveling to our older sister's house for Christmas time.  That means no postage costs to mail the gifts, plus I know the gifts will arrive in good condition.

Well, that's it for this week!  What did YOU do to save money and bless your family?  I would love to hear about it!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of October 27-November 2, 2019

Happy November Everyone!

Can anyone explain to me exactly where October went off to?  I am sure it was just starting a day or two ago. . . So why does my calendar now say “November” on it??? Ah, well, the days are flying by indeed!

I kept a partial list of my “frugal happenings” last week.  Which means that I started the week writing things down—but then my notepad got buried on my desk and well, yes, nothing much was recorded on it towards the end of the week.  But I should at least get part credit, right? ;)

So on to my list—
Remember our Fall Break trip to the Smokies just a little bit ago?  Well, while we were there, we hiked in some pretty chilly temperatures.  So chilly, in fact, that my toes and my daughter’s toes were both freezing inside of our hiking shoes.  My ears also got pretty cold with the wind blowing at Clingman’s Dome, as I gave my daughter my ear warmers to wear. Anyway, back at our motel I remembered friends who have talked about how wonderful “Smartwool” socks are.  Evidentially, there is a factory in the town next to where I live, and every now and then they open up and sell factory seconds really inexpensive, or something like that.  ANYWAY, so at our motel with my numb toes and ears, I remembered overhearing about Smartwool socks, and all of a sudden the thought occurred to me that I might be able to get some from LLBean.  Now I know what you are thinking—LLBean is fantastic quality, and great customer service, but is NOT necessarily an inexpensive place to purchase things from.  And I would have to agree with you—unless—you happen to have some store credit with LLBean, which I do.  SO.  Right from our motel—since I was thinking about it—I called LLBean and ordered two pairs of their Smartwool socks, so I could have one pair for myself and one for my daughter.  Then I talked with the nice customer service lady about my cold ears, and she recommended some ear warmers so I ordered those as well.  I knew they wouldn’t help me on our Fall Break trip, but there is plenty of cold weather ahead of us this winter, so I figured we would still get lots of use out of them!

Above is the picture of the Smartwool socks that arrived this week.  Their price is around $18 each pair, but with my credit I received them free. Free is ALWAYS my favorite price!!!  

Then here is the picture of the ear warmers I ordered.  If I am remembering correctly, this was around $23, but again I received it free.  Yay for warm ears!

The next thing I did to save money is I picked ALL of our tomatoes—even the green ones, because we were predicted to get our first night of frost.  Sigh.  I am so happy for cooler weather—our summer high temps were way long this year, but I would be happy to have Fall last just a bit longer with nice cool days, before it moves into cold Winter weather!  But oh well!  At least I could try and save the tomatoes that were growing in our garden!  I have never picked green tomatoes before, but I know my parents have done it for years.  I guess I never felt like I had that many tomatoes left in the garden to pick—but this year we sure did! 

My fingers were numb from picking all of these!  I looked up on-line to see what the best way to ripen them would be, and read to lay them out in a single layer.  I cannot afford to have them all over my kitchen counters, as then I have no room to cook—but decided I could somehow use the shelves in the basement where I grow my garden plants from seeds.  So that is what I did!

I picked out all the tomatoes that were red or starting to turn red, and put them together so I could keep my eye on them and make sure to bring them upstairs to the kitchen when they were ready to eat.  I have never ripened green tomatoes before, so we will see what happens!

Another frugal thing that I did was I picked the last rose in my yard. It was just a tiny, delicate thing, but hey, a free rose is a free rose!

Last but not least, Saturday night our family went to our church barn party!  There was no cost to attend, except that I DID bring some vegan brownies to share with everyone.  We all had a WONDERFUL time!  Food, fellowship, laughter, singing, hay rides--very good times!  The only thing is that the weather was predicted to be a tad on the COLD side. . . . So I decided it was a perfect time to test out those Smartwood socks and the ear warmers! 

Both my daughter and I wore our new socks.  Both of us were impressed overall--our toes got a little cool, but not super cold like they were in the Smokies.  And it WAS really REALLY cold outside, especially as the sun went down!  Maybe two pairs of Smartwool socks would be better?  But I did like the one pair I had on.  And my ears were toasty warm!!!  So happy to have both of these items, even if the ear warmers don't exactly make me appear glamorous! At least my ears were WARM!

My daughter helped with the music by playing the violin.  I am so thankful she is at least improved after her terrible tendonitis.  Not over it completely, but improved enough that she can play a bit here and there.  My hubby also helped with the music, by playing the mandolin.  I helped with the music by NOT playing any instrument--trust me--it's better that way! ;) 

The barn was beautiful!  All the food is set up on tables inside the barn.  I am so thankful for the family that opens up their property to our church family to use each year.  What a blessing they are to all of us!

The social committee worked really hard on this party, and it was lovely, just lovely!  Beautiful setting, beautiful decorations, fun prizes for the children--gifts for adults to win as well!  So much fun!

This tractor was all set up, ready for the hayrides later in the evening.  I couldn't resist taking it's picture.  It reminds me so much of my dad, who has an antique tractor that he still uses to cut much of their ten acres of land, even though he is 83 years old!  When I was a girl, I loved to ride on the tractor with him!

So that was my week!  What did YOU do to save money and bless your family?  I would love to hear about it!

~Susan