Frugal Friday! Week of April 19-26, 2020

Hello Friends!

How are you all hanging in there?  I hope well!  Our hearts are being cheered by the flowers that Springtime brings, though like everyone else we are very anxious for life to get back to whatever it is going to get back to!  We hope and pray it will soon be safe to be around each other.  We miss our family and friends.  I even miss chatting with people at the grocery store!

But that being said, we have SO much to be thankful for.  Our family is alive and well, even if not all together in the same place.  Our house was spared the recent tornadoes I mentioned in my previous post.  My husband still has a job, even though working from home now.  We have food and clothing, and at the moment even have electricity, though we DID lose our electricity again this week for most of a day.  We were thankful when it came back on late afternoon--yay for all the hardworking power company people!!!  And best of all, in spite of all this Social Distancing, as I have already posted about, our God is NOT a Social Distancing God--and that is the best gift of all!  No matter where we find ourselves, be it at home or in a hospital, alone or with others, we still have prayer.  And that puts us in immediate contact with the One who loves us the most!

So on to our frugal week!  My frugal accomplishment I am most proud of is I (with the help of my hubby) made a strawberry tower out of 100% recycled materials!  Yay for us!  Remember those clearance strawberry plants I told you about last week?  Well, after doing a bit of searching on-line on growing strawberries, I decided on a plan.  We have SUCH a large squirrel and chipmunk population in our yard--they ARE cute, and we DO enjoy watching them--but THEY enjoy eating berries, and while I applaud them on their healthy and wholesome food choice, I did decide I wanted to make it just a tiny bit harder for them to eat any strawberries that may come ripe.  I know, I know, they will get them anyway, I admit.  But rather than trail the berries on the ground for them, I thought perhaps I would make them work just a tad bit for those luscious berries, by raising them up just a little.  Therefore enter the strawberry tower!

First, I scouted around for something to use.  I found two old 5 gallon buckets that we were no longer using for anything, and cleared with my hubby that he wouldn't mind me repurposing them.  Then I asked if he would drill some holes in them for me.  We did some drainage holes in the bottom, then some larger ones in the sides.  

Next, we found an almost empty peanut container.  My hubby volunteered to finish emptying it--isn't that helpful?  ;)  Then he cut the bottom of the container off and drilled some tiny drainage holes all around the container.  This is to give me a water reservoir for getting water further down in the bucket to reach the lower plants.

I purposely did not put any plants in the bottom bucket, because I am trying to raise the strawberry plants higher than ground level.  So a few drainage holes went into the bottom of the bottom bucket, and then I just filled it with dirt from around in various pots that were not currently being used.  Then the strawberries were planted, one plant in each hole.  I smooshed those leaves very carefully through each of the drilled holes!

I am delighted in how it turned out! If you look closely, you can see in the middle of the bucket the edge of the old peanut container sticking up.  When I water, I also fill that peanut container and the water slowly weeps out the small holes to water then plants at a deeper level than just surface watering would reach.

And here it is in my garden!  It may not be elegant, but I like it!  And with the recycled containers, it only cost me the sum total of the clearance strawberry plants, which was $3.24!  Even if the chipmunks and squirrels eat all the berries, I am still going to get $3.24 cents worth out of pleasure in watching these berries grow!

On to other endeavors!  I also transplanted a blackberry baby this week!  It had come up in the pathway near the blackberry bed, and I waited until it was large enough I thought it would survive the move, then gently dug it up and moved it inside the bed where it can be cared for and not trampled on!

So far, it seems to have survived the transplant just fine, and has not wilted or anything!

The day that we again lost our electricity, my wonderful hubby tried AGAIN to get our broken generator working.  He had already spent many hours working on it the week before, when the tornadoes took out our power.  My brother in law had generously driven up to our house and helped him work on it for several hours, but no luck.  But my hubby tried ONE MORE TIME, and got it going!!!  So now we have a working generator once more, AND we were able to use it the day we had no electricity to keep our fridge and freezer going.  We of course had no idea how long it would be off, if it would be a day or several days or several weeks!  I was also able to heat our dinner up using our crock pot.

I was thankful that we had some leftovers in the fridge from the day before, but we did not have enough power with our generator to operate our microwave.  But the crock pot does not take that much, so I put our brown rice into two canning jars to heat up, and I had some Red Lentil Dal with sautéed onions that we put on top.  That went into another small oven proof bowl.  I was very happy I was able to get both foods into the crock pot at the same time to heat, yet was able to keep them separate.  I wasn't sure if they would heat in time, because they were cold from the fridge--but after about an hour or two in the crock pot, they were perfectly hot and bubbly!  As the house was a bit cold that day with no power, the hot food tasted EXTRA good!

Some activities did not need electricity!  My daughter was able to continue with her harp practice using a batter operated stand light that we had given her for her birthday.  At last, the stand light came in handy!

Another frugal activity was simply enjoying our yard.  It is rose time in my neck of the woods, and my roses are coming into bloom!

This large rose bush came from a tiny stick cutting that my now deceased mother in law gave me around fourteen years ago.  I was living in another state at the time, but knew my hubby was interviewing soon for his current job, so I kept my "stick" in a pot of dirt for several months just in case we ended up moving.  When we did move, we were first in a rental house, so it stayed in its pot. Finally, almost a year later, it was planted in a corner in our yard.  I gave it a trellis to climb on.  It ended up eating that trellis.  Yes, the trellis is still there, but it is buried for sure!!!  The rose will bloom a few blooms throughout the summer months, but now is the most beautiful time!

The blooms on it are tiny and delicate!

I love it, not only for its beauty, but also for the memories of my beautiful mother in law that it brings me.

I also am enjoying other roses that are blooming in my yard.  These are all from roses that I found last fall on clearance. The bushes are still small at this point--maybe around a foot and a half high, but they will grow!

I love pink roses!

And this red rose is also a real beauty!



I also made home made bread.  I make home made bread all the time, but this time I took the extra bit of time to make a batch in my cast iron Dutch oven, which gives it an extra crunchy crust.  I did a cranberry almond flavor with fresh orange zest.  It was delicious!

Last but not least, I received a start of some fresh oregano as well as some rosemary from a friend.  I have these in a cup of water, and they are not wilted yet so I have hopes they will be growing nice roots and I will be able to plant them and have them as an addition to my herbs this summer. :)

Well, that was it for me this past week!  How was YOUR week?  What did you find to do to bless your family?  I love to read ideas of what you are doing, because it inspires me and helps me remember things that I can also do, so please share!

Hope your new week is a wonderful one!

~Susan

Frugal Friday--Week of April 12-18, 2020

Hi Friends!

How are you all doing?  It has been a while since I did a Frugal Friday post.  Not because I haven't been doing everything that I can to save and bless my family with that savings, but just because I have been super busy--in spite of stay at home orders!  When you are a homeschooling parent, having the world close down doesn't really take anything off of my "to do" list.  I mean, our school goes on just the same, but there ARE other things that change and can add to being extra busy.  For one thing, my hubby is working from home currently, so that is that means another person in the house, more activity going on, a few more interruptions to my day, etc.  Now, I am not complaining, because I am thankful beyond measure that he still HAS a job, and that he CAN do a few weeks work at home during this time.  But I am still looking forward to things getting back to normal, whatever normal is and IF it ever gets back there.  But we will see.  One step at a time, and whatever each new day brings, I know my God will be there with me.

Another thing that has affected us is our community had a tornado rip through here just five days ago.  Our street was spared--we lost our electricity for several days, but did not lose a single tree.  Within walking distance of our house, I am afraid I cannot say the same.  Huge trees down, power lines were criss crossing the road everywhere, telephone poles snapped and leaning across driveways, roofs with huge holes in them from trees that had landed on them.  Just a few miles away, there are houses that were basically flattened, and a neighborhood where a four year old boy was hurt badly enough that he later died from his injuries.  My heart is so, so sad about all of this.

The above pictures are of our little public library.  It lost half its roof in the storms.  It could have been worse, but my heart is still sad.  It was bad enough that it was closed from the virus and not available to the children in our town, but now this.  I have not heard yet how much damage happened to the books inside. Trees are down everywhere.  HUGE trees, small trees, many torn right out of the ground.  

But we are still here. And we are trying to help those in need, while at the same time keep people safe and maintain what social distance one can when helping others in situations such as we are currently experiencing. I keep feeling this Bible verse in my heart: 

Anyway, all that to say there has been a lot going on around here!  A bit TOO much excitement!  So this post will include savings from the past couple of weeks.

*I found strawberry plants on clearance at Walmart for just .36 cents!  These are normally $3.47 each plant, so I was pretty thrilled!  At the time, I wasn't really sure where I could plant them, so I only bought nine plants and left probably ten more there. Later I wished I had purchased more, when I realized a few places I could fit them in our garden, but of course they were gone when I went back to the store the next day.  But I decided other people were blessed by finding some of them on clearance as well, so I am choosing to simply be happy at the nine plants I was blessed with! 

*I transplanted baby raspberry plants that had sprouted in our pathways back into their 4 x 8 raspberry bed.  One of the transplants looked like it may not make it, but all the rest seem to have survived the move just fine, so I am thrilled about that!

*I am carefully watching a blackberry baby that is also coming up in our pathway.  I am letting it grow a little larger, and then I will dig and try to transplant that back into it's 4 x 8 bed.  Our blackberries are looking very happy, and are covered with blossoms.  I am thrilled about this!  We do not have enough to grow a serious amount of berries, this is just for a hobby and to give our homeschooled daughter a chance to see how these plants grow, but any berries that we happen to beat the birds to will be much appreciated!  Our blackberries were my huge garden splurge last year.  I found them at our Walmart, and they were a thornless variety and were supposed to be appropriate to keep in a patio pot.  But they WERE more expensive than other blackberry plants--at $25 a plant!  I thought about it for a good long while, as it seemed just too much money for my budget to spend, but finally my hubby told me to just go buy one, and I did.  Once it was planted, I realized that our garden bed would easily fit two of them, and my husband is always looking for things that I really want as a birthday gift, as my birthday is in the summer and he never knows what to get me.  So he said he would get me a second plant for my birthday present.  I went to choose a second blackberry, and actually found one that looked like it had a baby coming up in the same pot.  So I bought that one, and before I planted it I cut the baby separate and planted it in-between the two large plants.  I am so glad I did, as over the winter it has grown and grown and grown, and is now almost the full size of the other two original plants!  And I feel like getting three plants for the price of two brought the overall price of them down a bit.  And now the baby in then pathway is coming along, and there is a second baby that is coming up still in the blackberry bed, so I won't have to move that one.  Overall, while it was expensive for sure to purchase the original two plants, I am VERY happy to have thornless blackberries, and so far they do appear to be a hardy variety so time will tell! 

*I started some lettuce, tomatoes, and collards using seeds that I already had.  Some of these seeds were between five and ten years old!  There were a couple varieties that did not germinate, but most did, so I was glad that I had tried to use what I already had.  I start my seeds in our basement on an old shelf unit, with just regular shop lights hanging from the shelves.  Nothing fancy, and nothing that is official grow lights.  

*When our plants were up and we were having some beautiful weather in the 80's, I took a chance and moved some of them out to our garden.  Then--just as Murphey's law would have it, we were going to have several nights with almost freezing temps.  I thought the plants would PROBABLY be alright, but worried since they were so small still.  So I thought about what I already had that I could cover them with, and realized I have a LOT of empty canning jars right now.  I used to can quite a bit of fruit each summer--sometimes over one hundred jars of each thing--but lately I cannot purchase the fruit in bulk cheaper than I can simply purchase the item already commercially canned.  No, it may not taste quite as good, but I really needed it to be helping out significantly with my grocery budget for me to go to all the work and effort to do serious canning.  So for right now, I am not doing a lot of home canning but I may sometime, depending on what I can get access to.  ANYWAY, so I decided my empty canning jars could be put to use as tiny greenhouses to protect my little plants! They worked great!  So now I know what I can grab if necessary.  About one more week and we will be past our average frost date, so we will see how things go after that!

*I have been staying completely out of the stores the past several weeks, but ended up needing to go to the Walmart pharmacy to pick up a prescription, so as long as I am in the store of COURSE I am going to walk through the Garden section of the store just to see what they have in!  There IS a reason that I typically park my car down by the Garden entrance! ;) Well, walking through the Garden area, I was looking for veggie plants.  They had hardly any of those, but they DID have some beautiful yellow roses that were all marked down on clearance!  I wouldn't have paid the full price for them, but a marked down price of $4.22 fit my budget pretty well!  And I have a place in the garden along the back fence that already has several roses from last Fall when I found some on clearance at our local nursery, so this little beauty can just fall in line right next to the others.

*My daughter is exchanging music lessons with a friend of mine.  My friend K inherited her grandfather's violin.  She doesn't remember him ever playing it, and didn't realize that he even HAD a violin!  But when her father asked her if she wanted it, she said "YES!" as she is quite the music lover!  So she would be receiving a free violin--but she had no idea how to play the violin!  K thought of my daughter, and offered to exchange harp lessons for my daughter, if my daughter would give HER violin lessons!  My daughter was pretty excited, but we had no harp.  Well, we had no harp until God sent her a harp to borrow from another friend, that is!  So my daughter is borrowing a small folk harp, and once a week has a Zoom lesson where K gives her a little harp lesson, and my daughter then gives K a violin lesson!  They are both thrilled with this arrangement, and they are both doing VERY well with their new music instruments! This has given my daughter a huge blessing, especially during this time when so many things closed or had to be cancelled.  It is extra special that God opened up this opportunity for my daughter to learn a new instrument, and one that she has been interested in for a long time now! 

Well, that is about it for our activities for the past several weeks!   What have YOU been up to?  And how are you blessing your family?  Remember to hang in there in the midst of all this craziness!  I have been studying Psalm 91 this month.  God is our refuge, He is our strong fortress!  Go read this Psalm for yourself--it is beautiful, and I pray that you will draw strength from it!

~Susan