Frugal Friday! Week of Aril 18-24, 2021

 

Hello Frugal Friends!

How was your week?  I hope it was a good one!  Mine was!  We had a lovely visit from my son and daughter in law! :) It was so nice to be able to spend a little time with them, even though my son was not on vacation and needed to continue with his work during the time he was here.  But since his work is still all online at this point, it was a good opportunity for him to take a trip and we enjoyed seeing him in the evenings and at meal times when he was not working, and of course our daughter in law had more flexibility so she and our daughter had some great time spent together.  Just chatting face to face, instead of over FaceTime (wonderful though FaceTime IS) was really nice.  And when they left to head back to their place, a part of all of our hearts left with them! 

But on to this week's frugal activities:

*My daughter took the ACT.  This is frugal in several ways. First of all, depending on how she scores, she will be earning college scholarship monies.  We are hoping that she scored high enough to be in the scholarship category that she wants--but if she doesn't, she will at least have a score so will have SOMETHING that her future college can look at.  We are still waiting to hear what her score was--they said she will know in 3-8 weeks, so it could be quite a while still before she hears.  Another way this was a frugal activity is that by God's grace, we were actually able to have her take it! So we didn't have to reschedule and pay a change fee!  The ACT test people ended up messing up our daughter's test, in that they changed the day and the test center from the one that she signed up for six months previous.  It is a long, sad tale that I will spare you, but the date they rescheduled her for was not a date that would work for her due to our religious beliefs, and the first customer service person I talked with when I discovered they had changed her test date simply said that we would have to pay a change fee and reschedule.  I didn't feel this was fair, since it was the ACT that had changed her test, not us. So I called back later and talked with a second customer service person, who assured me that we would NOT have to pay a change fee--which was a relief--but we still had the problem of getting her a test date and location, since in the meantime the original place she had registered for had filled when ACT took my daughter's name off the roster for testing there.  But ACT did find us a different testing location, but it was an hour drive away instead of one mile down the road. But at least it was a date that she could test! She needed to be at the test center at 7:30 a.m., so I packed breakfast as well as lunch food, so she could sleep just a little longer and eat breakfast in the car.  Since it WAS an hour away from home, I did not drop her off for testing like I would if she was testing close to home, but rather brought some things to do and simply stayed there waiting for her during the morning. 

My waiting location while my daughter tested. I was required to stay on the bottom floor, while the testing took place on the second floor in the classrooms.  I was grateful for a place to stay inside, as well as for wifi.  I had brought a variety of things with me, in case I was sitting in our car the entire four hours! Oh yes, access to a bathroom was also appreciated!

*We covered garden flowers when we had two nights of frost.  The flowers that have been in the garden all winter long I wasn't TOO worried about, as they have had snow on top of them this winter even.  Though of course it is harder on a plant when it has come out of dormancy and started to grow, and THEN it gets frosted.  But we gathered what buckets, tubs, and even an empty trash can and covered the few plants that had already been planted in the garden.  We are past our average frost date of April 14, but I guess average only means average, and the weather can do whatever it wants to!

We also gathered all our back porch flower pots together, and used the wheel barrel and a garden bench to drape a sheet over, secured with clamps to save our little blooms that live on the back porch.  Happily, they all survived just fine! 

*I repaired my son's shoe. He has a type of hiking boot that he loves, and as any other well loved item it has received a lot of wear. Overall, there is still a lot of good use left in his boots, but they are a velcro strap closure and the velcro on one of the top straps had come completely off.  I wasn't sure if I would be able to repair it or not, as the upper side of the strap is leather.  I didn't think my sewing machine could handle it, and wasn't sure if I wanted to take the chance on breaking my sewing machine.  But I tried with a large needle and some button thread, and thanks to the help of a thimble to push the needle through and a needle gripper to pull the needle from the other side, I was able to stitch the Velcro back on to the strap.  It won't last forever, but hopefully it will help him put a few more miles on those shoes before they need to be replaced. 

My stitching is not exactly even, and the line of stitching wobbles quite a bit--but my son could care less about the stitching, he just needs the velcro to close the shoe. Overall, I am super pleased with the result, and am glad that I tried!

*We read my daughter in law's History blog as part of our homeschool history class. This week's article was all about Charles Coolidge.  In our neck of the woods, there is a "Coolidge Park." We had always assumed it was named after President Coolidge, but we now realize that it is instead named after Charles Coolidge, who lived right here in Chattanooga area. He was truly a remarkable man, and we learned a lot from reading her post!  If you enjoy learning about either little known people, or little known facts about well known people, you might also enjoy reading Jolene's blog.  You can find this week's post at this link:

Men of Honor, Part 1: Mountains of Type

My son also guest posted this week on my daughter in law's blog, and wrote a fantastic article about the Civil War.  If you are interested in reading his post, you can find it here:

Musings on the Civil War

Both my son and his wife love history--this is one of their shared interests, and they love to research and learn and share!  They have quite a few resources on the Telling Their Stories blog--most of the articles written by Jolene, and many links to YouTube videos of historic places by Austin.

*We went to a museum together with my son and daughter in law.  It was the Medal of Honor Museum in Chattanooga, and was our first time going. It is VERY well done, and tells the stories of several of the Medal of Honor recipients, including Charles Coolidge which tied in nicely with my daughter in law's blog post this week! It was a perfect homeschool field trip! The museum is currently having timed entry due to COVID, and masks are required as well. When we first arrived, I think we were the only ones in the museum except for the employees! At the museum there was also quite a bit about Desmond Doss.  If you are not familiar with the story of Doss, you simply must look him up! A true hero for our young people--and old people as well--to look up to! While at the museum, we saved by parking in the meter parking on the side of the street, rather than in an all day parking lot.  The down side of the meter parking is you are limited to just two hours at a time, but it is fairly close to the museum itself so it wouldn't be difficult to run out and feed a few more quarters into the parking meter.  If you are visiting on a Sunday, the parking meter parking is free, but we were there on a Friday so did need to pay.  But the meter parking was lots less expensive than the local parking lots, so I was glad we had no trouble finding a space! 

One of the treasures at the Medal of Honor Museum was an 1818 copy of the Declaration of Independence. I was awed to see this artifact here in little old Chattanooga!  

This document alone is worth a trip to the museum, in my opinion!  but trust me, there is much, much more!  So go visit it if you are ever in the area!

*After our trip to the museum, we  went and  wandered around in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. This was a "free" activity, and was even on our way home from the museum.  Charles Coolidge just recently passed away, so we went to see his grave.  We also located and visited the grave site of Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss. Such great giants of men!  Also at this cemetery are graves of Andrew's Raiders, from the Great Locomotive Chase fame.  If you are not familiar with this story, definitely look it up!  History is fascinating! 

*We decided to recycle what we already had, instead of purchase something new for our needs.  I WAS going to purchase some cattle panels from Tractor Supply to use in our garden as tomato trellis and a trellis for other things such as beans and the like to climb.  I have seen on garden blogs that this is a very popular thing to do now a days.  However, the stores that sell cattle panels do not deliver--or at least, they do not deliver for anything that is a reasonable fee.  Well, one day as I was pondering this, I realized we had an outdoor dog kennel that we have not really been using hardly at all.  Our dog is quite elderly, and usually remains in our house when we are gone and a friend will run over to let her out if need be.  I realized that the panels that made up our dog kennel would probably work pretty well in the garden as a trellis--and it was already here sitting in our back yard!  Win-win in my book!  I told my hubby my idea, and he thought it was a good one as well, so instead of purchasing new panels we simply used what we already had! 

Here is one of the dog kennel "trellis" made out of two of the panels.  The dog has six panels, so enough to make three of these.  I am excited to see how it works for us!  One thing for sure--it is a whole lot more sturdy than the tomato cages we have used in the past!!!!!  I do not expect this thing to fall down under the weight of the tomatoes!

Well, that was my week!  We were busy, busy, busy!  How was your week and what were you up to?  I would love to hear about it!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of April 11-17, 2021

Hello Frugal Friends!

How was your week? I hope you are experiencing some of the same lovely Spring weather that I am getting in my neck of the woods!

My week was a great week!  I am just enjoying being outside as much as possible, and I am super busy which gives one a reason to get up in the morning!  Always good to feel needed! On the frugal front, I know I did more than this, but these are the few things that I actually jotted down: 

*I bought eight bags of mulch for our garden pathways on sale at Lowe’s. These are normally $4.00 per bag, but the sale price was for $2.00 per bag instead. I usually redo the garden pathways every couple of years.  First I lay down new cardboard, then I spread the old mulch on top and finally top with some new mulch. Eventually the weeds will find their way through, but this at least slows them down. . . 

*I put cardboard down in one of my flower beds, and covered that with mulch I had purchased last summer but never used. The cardboard was free from the grocery store, so no cost there. Having my garden beds mulched in this way will help keep weeds down, so less time needed to spend on weeding. It also will help conserve water, and will help my flowers grow stronger and be less likely to perish in our summer heat.

*My hubby and I were able to receive our second COVID vaccine. We both had very minimal reactions to the shot, other than the typical sore arm which we get from any shot. We are thankful to be on this side of it! 

*We read this week’s post on my daughter in law’s History blog. This week she wrote about the “why” of learning about History.  I thought she made some very, very good points! If you would enjoy reading her lovely blog, you can find this week’s post listed here:

A Few Thoughts on the Importance of Studying History

*We decided to just use what we could scrounge from what we already had, when we realized we needed to build two trellises to help contain two David Austin roses that I purchased on clearance two years before. The roses were “supposed” to be shrubs, but I have discovered they are shrubs OR short climbers. Well, I guess my roses have decided they are the “short climber” variety!  These roses are called “Tess of the d’urbervilles.”  They bloom absolutely huge, lovely deep red blossoms, around the size of an orange! My sweet hubby offered to build me something using some scraps that had been used previously for another project and then dismantled. He even painted them up with leftover white paint!  And the truth is, he rebuilt my trellis THREE TIMES, as the first two times they weren't quite the "right" size for the rose.  Now THAT is a very sweet man!  So one rose has it's trellis, and a second trellis is in the works for the second rose.  These roses are planted right at our garden entrance, and are quite thorny.  As they grew longer and longer and LONGER, I started calling them "Guardians of the Garden," as they were keeping all including US outside of the garden with their waving thorns!  Or rather, we were stepping over the small bunny wire fence in other places to enter! I cannot wait to see them bloom this year--they already have buds! When I bought them fall of 2019, they were on clearance for under $10, which is pretty rare to find a David Austin rose for that price!!! 

*I bought strawberries and asparagus on sale at my Aldi’s. When I brought them home, I placed them and my other produce in my Rubbermaid produce containers.  When I first saw these containers in the local Walmart, I doubted if they would REALLY work at extending the life of my produce.  So I bought one and did my own test. I was amazed that they really DID keep my produce lasting longer!  No, my produce is not going to last forever.  But they truly do extend by several days anyway, as compared to just having your produce sit in the package from the store on your fridge shelf. After I did my own test, I purchased several more containers in various shapes, comparing prices with Amazon and purchasing my containers from the lowest place source. I have been using these for several years now, and have zero complaints.  They are sturdy and hold up very well. 

*We shared a meal with my sister and her family at our house.  My nephew goes to college in the same town that we live.  His birthday is coming up, so my sister and her hubby drove up to celebrate with him. We shared a meal together, and each contributed a part of the meal. It was a nice little family get together. My nephew’s girlfriend and his sister were also able to join us. 

*We went for a hike!  One of my favorite things to do, in my favorite place (the woods!), with my favorite people! We have been enjoying identifying the new wildflowers that are out all over the woods now.

The top pink flower I am not sure of the variety, but the middle white one is a Mayapple and the bottom red one is a Fire Pink!  Does anyone know what the pink flower is?  I would love to learn! Hiking is a free and frugal activity, and requires almost nothing in the way of equipment. 

Well that was my week!  How was yours?  What did you do to save money or resources and bless yourself or your family? I would love to hear about it!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of April 4-10, 2021

 Hello Frugal Friends! 

How was your week? I am thankful to be able to say that this past week went much better for us than the week before did! I am so glad, because the previous week exhausted me in many ways! But now we have had some recovery time, and the weather has been just beautiful! The wildflowers are blooming out in the woods, and I love hearing all the birds sing! 

So onto our frugal activities:

*I dug up baby raspberry plants that were trying to take over my garden pathway. Some of them I transplanted back into the garden bed where they are SUPPOSED to be growing (raspberries are rather unruly children, and do not follow the garden rules very well 😉) and some I gifted to the “plant lady” at my local Walmart. She and I had been “garden talking” the previous week, and I mentioned that I had baby raspberry plants that I needed to move and that I could bring her some if she wanted. Her eyes lit up and she expressed that she would absolutely LOVE some raspberry plants! So I found out when she would be back at my local store, and made a mental note to bring her some. She was so surprised and delighted when I showed up on Monday with baby plants stuck into a baggie with their roots wrapped in a damp paper towel! Seeing her happiness at least doubled my own happiness! I did give her the proper warning that they ARE on the invasive side, so to make sure she planted them only in an area that she does not mind them taking over, because they will! But—they give you raspberries, so they are forgiven! 

*I purchased lavender plants for $1.00 each. After I gave the plant lady the raspberries, I went ahead and looked at what she was marking down on clearance. I was able to purchase seven lavender plants for just $1.00 each. They only needed water, and by the next day had recovered completely. The plant lady knew this, but with so many plants for sale in the Spring shoppers are not going to choose a wilted plant to buy when they can purchase a better looking plant. Thus she was marking them down so they wouldn’t simply die and need to be thrown out. At the same time I purchased a Columbine for $2.00. I am not sure yet if that plant is going to recover for me or not. It hasn’t died—but it also has not bounced back like the Lavender has. So time will tell. I did get it planted in my flower bed yesterday, and mulched it well, so maybe it will recover now that it is not living in a pot. We will see!

*I bought a tray of Marigolds for just $1.00. As I have mentioned previously, I do not put a lot of my garden dollars into annuals, but for just $1.00 they are now bringing a nice pop of color with their cheerful faces on our back porch. My teen daughter absolutely loves them, as I knew she would. 

*I accepted the offer of some cut lilacs from our neighbor. We enjoyed these flowers on our table for a full week before they faded. Every day my daughter and I plunged our noses into them, to drink deeply of God’s perfume. I do not enjoy perfume that comes in a bottle, but when it comes in the form of a flower it always smells wonderful to my nose!

*I took my daughter to receive her first COVID vaccine. While not happy for the necessity of getting it, we are thankful that she was able to receive it as our county recently opened up immunizations down to the age of 16. It was a bonus that the location she was able to get it was a circle drive through a nature park! It was a slightly misty, lovely drive. We would have preferred to be in the park hiking, but we did enjoy the time together. We were super SUPER impressed with the organization of everything.  It was a circle drive, with spots for ID checking, a tent to receive your shot, and a place where you waited in your car afterwards for 20 minutes to make sure you didn't have a reaction.  We were told when she received her shot that if we needed help, just start honking our horn and they would come immediately to help us.  We felt grateful and cared for.

*I looked up my daughter in law’s History blog to read her new post. This week she wrote about the Mason Dixon line, and how it came about. I learned things that I had never known before! If you would enjoy reading a fantastic History blog, you can find it here:

A Line Between North & South

  She includes additional resource links with every article she writes— fantastic resource for anyone interested in History, and especially for homeschoolers!

*We had our carpets professionally cleaned. How is this frugal, you may wonder? Several years ago my husband and I had our entire house re-carpeted. The carpet that we choose has a warranty for a good number of years, stating that dirt,stains, etc. will come out. The condition of keeping the warranty valid, however, is you must have your carpets professionally cleaned every 18 months, and keep the receipts to prove that you had them cleaned. You also must use a company that uses hot water extraction method for their cleaning. Well, we may choose to let our carpet warranty expire some time, but my hubby and I decided that while it was new, anyway, we would do our best to keep it valid. And were we ever glad that we did! Even though we do our best to remove shoes when entering our house, there is still dirt that inevitably gets tracked in. The very first 18 month time period when we had our carpets cleaned, there was dirt that did not clean out. I called the warranty number, and they sent a different company to our house just to do a spot check, to see if THEY could improve the dirt stained portion. If the second company had been successful, we learned that the warranty would not have covered anything, as they would simply say the first cleaning company did not do a good job but there was nothing wrong with the carpet. BUT, the dirt staining did not come out for the second company either. I had to send pictures of the carpet areas to the warranty people to prove it, but they did indeed replace our entire houses carpet! It WAS a lot of work on our part, as we had to once again clear every single room of everything! You should have seen how much furniture can be stuffed into a kitchen or bathroom! And anything small was carried downstairs to the basement. My husband and I are both teachers, so this meant a LOT of books! But we did receive new, unstained carpet in return, AND the bonus is when you move everything in your house it is definitely a good opportunity to look at what you have and decluttered what you are not using! Having our carpets cleaned will also help them wear longer, as any dirt that falls underneath the carpet acts just like sandpaper when you walk on the carpet, and it will wear out sooner. I did use a coupon that I found for $30 off the cleaning price, so I was thankful for that. And the two young men who did the job were very pleasant and professional. I was happy my business could help them have jobs.

"My humans are crazy and piled all this stuff on top of their bed!"

It took 24 hours of not walking on the carpet, to allow it time to completely dry.  Fortunately, our kitchen is large enough to move the school table in and use that for meals, homeschool, etc.

Our "Music Room," which is basically our adult son's childhood bedroom--now holding a borrowed harp, two violins, one viola, and two mountain dulcimers.  We normally keep a humidifier going in this room to help with the wooden instruments.  They need the right humidity in order to not dry out too much and crack, etc.  Well, I have learned how to NOT need to run the humidifier--just have your carpets cleaned!!!  We normally want the humidity range in this room to be between 40 and 60.  When I went in after the carpet cleaners were done, the humidity was a high 68!!!  

Well, that was my week! How was yours? What did you find to do to save money and bless your family? I look forward to learning from you!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of March 28-April 3, 2020

 

Hello Frugal Friends!

This was a hard week, and doesn’t really feel like I did a whole lot to save money—yet I know that I did, even in just “normal” living. I bet you as well have things you do on a day to day basis that saves your family dollars and stretches what you have. We do not often give ourselves credit when we should. So on to the frugal things: 

*I had food frozen away in meal containers in our freezer for an “emergency.” Our week started with my needing to drive my hubby to a doctor visit at the local hospital. He had an out patient surgery last week, and this was the first follow up appointment and my hubby had not been cleared to drive yet, so therefore I needed to drive him. We had HOPED that he would have much improvement at this visit, but he was not as improved as expected. The nurse sent him home, with instructions to call their office if things did not improve during the day. It had taken us one hour to drive to the hospital, about an hour of waiting there, and an hour drive back home. I was pretty tuckered by the time we got home, right about lunch time. How thankful I was for the simple spaghetti and sauce that I had frozen another time when we had had too much left over. It was a blessing to be able to pull it out of the freezer, already in a meal size portion, and pop it in the microwave. It tasted wonderful to these weary travelers! I was especially glad we had a good meal when we realized that my hubby needed to head back into the doctors office. Sooo, another hour drive in, another hour waiting, and another hour drive home. After a total of six hours going to, from, or waiting at the doctor’s office that day I decided having prepared food in the freezer is huge in saving money and just plain saving your sanity. We also ended up with another trip to see the doctor on Thursday, thankfully that time at a closer office so it was a little shorter of a drive to get there. And while it is incremental, there is some small improvements, so we are thankful. You can see in the picture above the meal containers I use.  I have learned to label the ends of the containers with what is in them. What seems super obvious at the time you freeze it has a way of becoming a bit less obvious as time and memory passes, if you know what I mean!  I have found the small post it notes to work well for this, and I do tape the sides onto the container.  I wondered if the tape would stay on in the freezer, but it has worked just fine. I need to get a stash more made up, so I can in this way have my own version of "fast food."  Not only is it much less expensive, but since I have some food intolerances it is very difficult for me to purchase ready made foods.  This way I can have convent foods that won't make me sick--AND they are inexpensive as well.  Win, win, win in my book!

*I called to receive help, and when the first person was not helpful, I called back later to speak with another person.  This concerned my teen daughter taking the ACT exam. She registered six months ago, to test at a testing center a mile from out house. With COVID, testing is especially difficult to get a spot as the test centers are having to socially distance students, etc. So that was why we had to wait for six months to get a testing spot. Well, it is a long, sad tale which I will spare you the details, but in a nutshell the ACT messed up my daughter’s test reservation, and unknown to us ended up switching her to a different test center on a different day—and the day they changed her to did not work for her at all. As soon as I discovered that her test reservation had been changed, I contacted ACT. The first person simply told me we would have to make a new reservation. Well, the test cost $55 to register for, plus the fact that our daughter had been waiting all school year for her turn to test. I did not feel it was right for us to have to pay the fee all over again, when it was the ACT that had messed up her reservation. I called back, and received a very helpful employee that time. Unfortunately, they could not get her into the original test center that she registered for, as all the spots had been filled by other students when they moved her off the list for that test center. But the employee did manage to get my daughter another test center a few days later. Sadly it is an hour drive away, but she will be able to test and she was not charged a change fee. Under the messed up circumstances, it was the best solution that could be done.

*I ordered my hubby’s birthday gift online, during a 20% sale. When I realized that I was just missing the limit for free shipping by 60 cents because of the sale prices bringing my total down, I asked if there was still any way I could receive free shipping. The employee readily said my total was “close enough” for the company to give me free shipping on my order. This saved me $5.00. Our "kitten" (I use that term loosely, since he is now a grand total of 14 pounds!!!) of course, thinks the present is the box and paper, and he is convinced it is for him! ;) 

*I bought flowers for my soul on clearance. By Friday, I was feeling such relief at having made it through a difficult week.  As I was shopping for groceries at Walmart, I ran into an employee that works in the garden section of the store.  I stopped to chat for a minute with her, and asked if they had any plants on clearance.  She directed me to several that I would have never seen on my own, and told me she had just marked them down to $2.00 each! 

Our area has just had several nights of literally freezing weather, which is not normal for us at this time of year. Walmart had covered all the plants, and most of them looked pretty good, but some of the plants that had been on the top of the racks had had the tarps laying directly on top of them, and had gotten a bit smooshed.  The employee told me that she had decided to simply clearance those plants out, but she was positive they would recover. 

I went ahead and purchased all three that she showed me.  This big one of geraniums was normally priced at around $20! And the other two were around $13.  I paid a total of $6 for all three.  They are annuals, and I normally do not spend my dollars on annuals, preferring to put my money into perennials that will come back each year.  But after my crazy week, I decided having some pretty annuals to place on our back porch was not a bad idea, and one silver lining is I do not need to come up with a "permanent" spot for them in my garden area.  I can just enjoy them now, and throughout the summer, and not worry about them dying because I know they will. So I bought these three plants instead of getting an Easter lily.  And I won't have to worry about my cat chewing on them and getting sick, since they will be outside and our cat is an inside only cat. Since our weekend weather was for more frost warnings, the plants lived in my basement sewing room for the weekend, and will move out to their back porch home today. 

Well, that was my week!  It was busy and flew by and I was exhausted by the time it was done.  But God is good, and carried us through each problem.  How was your week?  What have you done to save money and bless your family? I would love to hear about it!

~Susan