Frugal Friday! Week of March 21-27, 2021

 

Hi Frugal Friends!

How was your week? Were you slow and relaxed, or running around as I was?  We had some extremes in weather, from absolutely beautiful to thunderstorms and sleeping in the basement due to possible tornadoes! I am very grateful that no tornadoes developed in our storms, but my heart and prayers are with those who did have tornadoes in Alabama and other parts of the country.

What did you do this week to save dollars and bless your family? I did not have anything huge, but just little everyday steps. And I know that being consistent in day to day activities truly will add up over time!

*I repotted some of my baby tomato seedlings that I started from seed. These I have on a shelf unit in our basement, with just plain old shop lights hanging from the shelf above. Nothing fancy, no special grow light bulbs. It may not be perfect, but it works for me. As long as I don’t start my seeds too soon (whereby they get too leggy), they seem to do just fine. In my neck of the woods, right around Valentine’s Day—not before—is the right time to start my tomato seeds inside. They are looking quite nice right now, and I “would” be thinking of planting them outside this coming week—but we are predicted to get some unusual cold temps in a few days, so I will just keep these babies inside awhile longer.

                             

I have also planted seeds inside for a few other things—my garden area is not huge, and is mainly taken up with things such as perinneal flowers, raspberries, blackberries, etc.—things that just stay in the same spot year by year. But I did start a few other things. Also tried using some of my older seeds first, before purchasing new seeds. Some things grew just fine, some things did nothing, so I will be purchasing new seeds and trying again. For tomatoes, most of mine are cherry tomatoes, perfect for popping into salads or mouths! I also am trying a new larger tomato variety this year, called Carbon. We will see how it does. I started some Romas which I like to use to dry in the dehydrator, but not a single Roma came up this year, so my seed may be too old, since the other tomatoes came up just fine.

*I made a batch of home made granola. This is a recipe that I have changed so much on that I can probably claim it as my own creation by now! It is sweetened with bananas and dates. Dates are not inexpensive, but I stopped using refined sugar several years ago, and my health improved dramatically, so I do all my sweetening with applesauce, bananas, or dates. This is my hubby’s “every day” breakfast, and my daughter will eat it each time when I make it fresh, as she loves it warm out of the oven—I bake it on a very low temp overnight, so it is warm and ready right at breakfast time. Most days my daughter and I have steel cut oats cooked in the instant pot, which is wonderful for being able to set a timer and have your food ready when you need it! 

*I returned a music book to Amazon by dropping it off at Kohl’s. My daughter’s piano teacher had mentioned twice that she would really like us to purchase a certain music book for her. It was a book that my daughter was really wanting, and it did have a collection of songs in it. So I finally bit the bullet  so to speak and purchased the book from Amazon. Then—the very day the book was scheduled to be delivered—guess what book my daughter happily found in her music library??? Yes—that very same book! We had already purchased it from a used book store and added it to her personal music library for “someday” when her piano playing reached that level. Well, someday is today! The book new was $22, and the price sticker on our used book was $2, so I certainly did not want to end up paying $22 for a book that we had already bought!  Fortunately, I could return it for free at a Kohl's store, AND my hubby had a doctor's visit at a medical mall that was literally right across the street from our nearest Kohl's.  With COVID, I am not allowed to go into the office with him anyway, so I dropped him off for his doctor appointment and crossed the street to return the book.

Well, I know I did more things than this, but these are the things I remember so will bring this to a close.  What did YOU do last week to save money and bless your family?  I would love to hear from you!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of March 14-20, 2021

 Greetings Frugal Friends!

Sorry it has been so long since I wrote up a Frugal Friday post. Life has been super busy--like always!  I often think I could use a secretary.  Reality is I HAVE a secretary, but that secretary is ME! Let's just say I am never, EVER bored!  I ALWAYS have things to be doing. 

But I actually did get some of my frugal savings jotted down during this past week, so thought I should at least take a minute to share as I know how much I enjoy reading what other bloggers are doing.  So I figure I should at least make an attempt every now and then to reciprocate. This was a really great week in the savings area! 

*My daughter inherited a double case, for holding both a violin and a viola. This is a huge blessing!  It came from a music teacher friend, whom we met for the first time through a music camp that our daughter's violin teacher is the director of each summer.  Anyway, Mr. B. is one of the teachers who comes to help with the camp each year, and what a sweet, kind, encouraging teacher he is to the students!  He also plays both violin and viola, and has been very encouraging when our daughter took up playing the viola in addition to the violin a few years ago.  This was his case, and it had gotten to the point where the hinges had broken and a few other things were wearing out.  He had been told that it "could" be fixed, but had chosen to invest in a new case for himself.  But then he didn't want to just throw away his old case, if someone else could get some use out of it.  So one day I received a text from him, asking me if our daughter might be interested in it. He told me about the broken hinges, but that it was "fixable." We were DEFINITELY interested, so when he had a chance, he sent it our direction by pony express, since he lives in a different state. Finally, the case arrived and our daughter's cat had a chance to look it over and see what really needed to be done. 

Hard sided cases are often made of wood, covered with a fabric.  This fabric cover needed to be removed to access the hinges.

"Yes, I think it is fixable," says the cat.

Two of the three hinges were broken. It was the pin that holds the hinge parts together that had broken, so something was needed that could replace those pins.

A piece of old wire hanger seemed to fit just perfect!  It may not last forever, but it might get our daughter down the road a few years with this case!

The front flap that snaps over was also pretty ripped and worn.  I thought about trying to save this, by sandwiching it in-between some pieces of black denim, but finally decided that would make it harder for her to get into the case, and since there was still a working zipper and a working clasp on the case, this flap was not really necessary for closure.  Therefore, I simply took my sharp sewing scissors and cut off the ripped flap.  It was amazing how much better just doing that part helped!

Next the inside received a good vacuuming out.

And the final result was one VERY happy teen with a working double case! I am so grateful to Mr. B. for thinking of Alison and passing on his double case to her.  Hard sided cases are super expensive!  A hard sided violin or viola case will run between $200-300, and a double case is even more than that! So this is a real blessing!  

Some of you readers here may remember that in the Fall Alison was using her music as a fund-raiser for our local food bank, which had really been hit hard from both more families needing their services, along with more people not being able to make their normal contribution to the food bank due to COVID and its impact on jobs, incomes, church service collections for the food bank, etc. Some of you here even made donations to Alison's GoFundMe page, which meant SO much to her--that even total strangers would support her project!  Well, this month an article from The Samaritan Center came out in their newsletter about Alison and her fund raising efforts.  I thought since some of you helped her reach her goal, you might enjoy reading the article about her: A Love of Music. 

*I made soap!  O.K., so this may not exactly fall under "frugal." I freely admit that I can purchase soap less expensively than I can make it myself.  BUT--currently soap making is my main hobby, so that makes it also fall under good for mental health.  My end product does not collect around the house and create clutter, as it LITERALLY goes down the drain, so while I may have to store my supplies I never have very much of my final craft to store, and it IS better for our skin--and my daughter does have very sensitive skin and will sometimes break out in a rash from using other products. . . so I count soap making under "frugal activities."  If I compare it to purchasing home made soaps, it is definitely more frugal to make it myself! 

So I finally took time to make one "loaf" of home made soap this past week.  I had not made any since in the Fall, when I made a lot for Christmas gifts and sold some.  It felt SO wonderful to be creative and making soap again!  

This was a new recipe for me, and it is a Lemongrass soap.  I LOVE the scent the Lemongrass essential oil gives it!

The mold I used gives me squares of soap.

The hardest part of soap making is now I have to wait 4-6 weeks before I can use the soap, as it needs to "cure." During this time, chemical processes are happening in the soap and before we use it on our skin I will check to make sure it is "safe" to use.  It will also be hardening as water in the soap recipe evaporates out of the soap, leaving a harder bar of soap.  If a soap were used before this evaporation was able to happen, it would melt away very quickly. My soap making is called "cold process" soap.  If a person makes "hot process" soap, that soap can be used immediately after it hardens.

I ended up with ten bars of Lemongrass soap.  Since I already had all the ingredients to make the soap in my home, it felt like a "free" craft!  Of course, it is not free since I already purchased those supplies, but it IS nice to be able to use things that you already paid for and create a "new" thing! I have several more new soap recipes that I am wanting to test out, as I get the chance.

*I found two blouses for our daughter at two different thrift stores.  And since I had store credit at both of those stores, we were able to walk out of the stores with our purchase without having to pay anything.  This was a blessing!  Our daughter is hard to find blouses for that fit her.  You wouldn't think she was hard to fit, but she is very slender and also tall.  It is easy to find slender tops, but they are usually too short. AND given the fact that she is a violinist and violist, she is always raising her arms up and does not want her top to be raising up in a not modest way when she does play! Or, if the top is long enough, it is often then too wide and just hangs on her.  So we have gone shopping many times and come back with nothing, as we could find nothing that fit!  So we were very happy to find two blouses that will work for her on the same day.  It so happened that both blouses were navy blue--which is a good color, but she did already have one navy blue blouse.  BUT, these are a different style, and given how hard it is to find correct sizing I thought it would be good to go ahead and get them anyway, especially free after our store credit.

*I was able to get some filler paper at Staples at a great price.  My husband had purchased something at Staples for his work, and at checkout the register gave him a receipt that included a coupon for $10 off of a $20 purchase, which he then passed that coupon on to me. For my Bible study in the morning, I like to write my notes on the little half size filler paper, and store it in the Staples half size binders, I think they call mini-binders.  I like this size a lot, because it is approximately the same size as my Bible, so I can carry the notebook and my Bible to church easily together.  But it can sometimes be difficult to find the half size filler paper.  I had looked on the Staples web site and seen they had the filler paper for $1.99, so I figured I would take my coupon to the store (it was listed as for in store use only) and purchase eleven packets of the filler paper so I could reach my $20 purchase amount, and then get the $10 coupon off of it leaving my total out of pocket just a little over $1 per packet.  Well, when I got to the store I was dismayed to see they were selling the half size filler paper for $3.29 each!!!  I am so glad I asked the manager about it though, because he immediately looked it up on the Staples web site and said that he could price match his in store price with the online price.  So it was very worth while my looking up the price ahead of time online!  And now I have a nice stack of filler paper to keep going with my Bible studies! 

*We enjoyed learning some more little known history from reading my daughter in law's History blog.  I keep meaning to mention her blog here, as I think there are many who would really enjoy reading her posts.  She is posting a new post every Tuesday, and focuses her blog on more little known people or little know facts about well known people.  I am using her blog as part of our homeschool History studies, but it is very interesting to anyone with a love of learning, not only for homeschoolers.  One thing I especially appreciate is that at the end of each blog post she gives quite a lengthy list of resources both that she used as well as resources for people wanting to learn more on that topic.  This past week, her blog post was about a deaf poet from the Civil War era.  I had never heard of this woman, and I shared the blog post in a homeschool group that I am a part of.  It turned out that one of our group members is deaf herself, and had actually attended the specific school for deaf that was mentioned in the blog post that the Civil War era poet had attended!  My daughter in law also included a preview of a short movie about deaf children.  This caught my interest so much (my daughter in law's plan, all along--get people interested in History!) that I looked up and watched free online the entire film.  It really opened my eyes to this often overlooked group of people in our own country.  With my son having cerebral palsy, that disability and others like it are very much in my thoughts, but being deaf is truly an invisible disability.  Anyway, if anyone is interested in reading a wonderful History blog, I promise you will really enjoy reading this one! Telling Their Stories

Well, that is what we did this past week!  I am looking forward to reading what others are up to!  Spring is finally here, and we are enjoying the beautiful blooming flowers--I hope you are as well!  Remember--every single flower is an "I love you!" from your loving Creator!

~Susan