Frugal Friday! Week of July 18-24, 2021

Greetings Frugal Friends!

How was your week?  Mine was busy and blessed! I hope your week was filled with many, many good things as well!

*My daughter’s birthday and my birthday are just two weeks apart.  We had wanted to invite a friend over to help us celebrate our daughter’s birthday, but had lots of other things going on that weekend.  So we finally got together and did a combination birthday celebration.  We had popcorn, grapes, and fruit ice cream made out of literally just bananas.  We “did” have birthday candles and a few sprinkles on top of our “ice cream,” but I forgot to take a picture of our dishes before we started into them!  But better late than never, right?  It was yummy, and perfect on a hot day!  I use my Champion Juicer to make my banana ice cream.  It is not an inexpensive juicer, but I do believe it will  last forever and if a tornado is in the area it also can double as a rather good “boat anchor” as well, so just hang on to it!  Honestly, I have never heard of a Champion Juicer that died.  In fact, true story—after I heard my at that time future daughter in law comment that she would love to have one, I found a used one for her on FaceBook Market place.  It was harvest gold in color, if that gives you any idea of it’s age, and the lady I bought it from was the original owner and was simply moving in with her adult daughter so was downsizing her kitchen things.  It still works great, and my new daughter in law was delighted to receive it for a wedding present! :)  We also make different flavors of ice cream by running frozen bananas through, interspersed with other frozen fruits such as mangos, strawberries, pineapples, etc.  For me, I always use frozen bananas as my base since bananas give it such a creamy consistency, but you can also just do the other frozen fruits.  My daughter in law is allergic to bananas, so she makes her fruit ice cream with frozen mangos, frozen strawberries, etc. 

*My cat shares my birthday—or as near as the vet could guess, since my cat was a stray.  So I had to get a birthday picture with my “Birthday Twin” on my actual birthday DAY.  My cat is two.  I am slightly more than two. A stray cat is considered by many to be of no significance—worthless—a menace.  But to ME, this cat is of great value and I love him dearly!  Even if he does favor my daughter over me.  Even if he has chewed up all the blinds in my house.  Even if he did refuse to smile for our birthday picture! Kinda makes me think about how others may consider us “worthless,” but when God looks at us, He sees someone of GREAT value!  I hope you know how much God loves you! 

*We are not finished yet, but we bought materials to enclose our breezeway at Lowes.  We used our Lowes cc and received 5% off of the purchase of the materials.  My hubby is doing the work himself, with a little help from me in lifting and holding and adjusting the two doors.  The space made by enclosing is tiny indeed, but I wanted to have a place that we can sit and actually take off our shoes before coming in the house, and even leave our shoes and not have to worry about chipmunks and such chewing on our shoes or dust and rain covering them.  We still need to enclose above the doors, calk and trim.  After that, we will wash down the ceiling and walls and can paint a top coat paint on the doors—right now they just have primer on them.  I bought a very durable throw rug to go in this area—it is one that you can literally beat with a broom and hose down with the garden hose when it gets too dirty.  After the cleanup and painting is done, I will place this rug there, and it will give a nice place to take off our shoes.  I am looking forward to it being finished, but since my hubby is a teacher and school will soon be starting, it might be Thanksgiving vacation before it gets finished!  I hope not, but it might!

*I found a YouTube video telling how to save tomato seeds.  I have always been intimidated just a bit, since I had read that you have to do things to get the seed coating off of the seeds before saving.  Well, I am glad I finally looked up and learned how, because I want to save seeds from my Carbon tomatoes.  They are heirlooms, so the seeds “should” grow true to what I grew this year.  Time will tell if the seeds I saved are viable, but we will see in February if they grow when I start them inside!

*Took daughter to take drivers test for her permit.  She passed the test on the first try—yay! So no need to pay the fee again for a second try!

*Stopped at Indian grocery store on the way home from DMV.  Bought spices, tofu, eggplant and rice noodles at much cheaper prices than regular grocery stores.

*Ordered two books for homeschool on a sale plus received free shipping.

*I made several containers of “freezer jam.” I try not to use refined sugar, so I just make up my own fruit spreads and keep them in the freezer so they won’t spoil.  My daughter likes them really well, so I guess that is what counts!  This batch I made a mixed berry since that is what I had for frozen fruit.  It had strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries.  I cooked them on the stove, cutting the large strawberries into smaller pieces.  Then in the blender I threw some water, a little corn starch for thickening, and some pitted dates to make it sweet.  After blending, I added this mixture to the frozen fruit and cooked it until it thickened nicely.  It tastes pretty yummy, if I do say so myself.  We also sometimes use fruit sauce like this to spread on waffles and pancakes, but when making it to use as “jam” I do try and make it thicker rather than runnier.

*We picked our “apple harvest!”  We have one semi dwarf apple tree that I planted after we moved here.  Actually, I planted three semi dwarf apples, but only one has survived.  It is a Red Gravenstein, and is the most wonderful sweet-tart apple you have ever had!  And THIS year is the FIRST year we have gotten more than maybe four apples off of it!  Of course, the dear little deer have always gotten quite a few apples off of it, but this year they actually shared some with us.  I have already made two apple crisps with these apples, but we ate them down before I thought of getting a picture!  So you will have to imagine these apples in a yummy, apple crisp hot from the oven! The rest of the apples are safely tucked away in our refrigerator, away from our deer friends!

*We picked our peach harvest!  I planted three semi dwarf peach trees as well, and two of those three trees have survived.  Like the apple tree, the dear deer always get most of the ones we can reach.  They cheat, as they pick them and eat them before they are ripe!  But the weather THIS year was better not only for more peaches than we have ever gotten before, but we also got out there with the ladder and got them picked before the deer got all of them!  I need to learn how to spray them, because they do get bugs in them—but I cut them open before eating and cut any bad parts out.  I prefer to think of them as “organic” rather than “bugged!” They ARE good tasting, and we have been enjoying them greatly!

WELL, that was my week!  Oh yes—I also picked LOTS of cherry tomatoes!  I will be sad when my garden tomatoes are all gone, and that day is not far off.  How was your week?  What did you do to save and to bless your home and family?  I would love to hear about it!

~Susan

Frugal Friday—Week of July 11-17, 2021

 

Hello Frugal Friends!

How was your week last week?  Mine was definitely slower than the previous week, which I needed!  I loved all the things we did and the people we were able to see the previous week, but my introverted self also appreciated the time to kinda catch up on laundry, and other tasks around the house as well as simply catch my breath!  

So on to my frugal things!  

*We worked on eating foods that we had leftover from the previous week.  For us, this meant watermelon for one thing!  I had purchased four watermelons to have for the day we were feeding 15 people (which turned into 13 at the last minute), thinking we would probably use three of them and then still have one for  the week after.  Well, I was wrong!  Guess people filled up mostly on our haystack meal, because we didn’t even finish off two watermelons, let alone eat three of them!  And they were EXCELLENT watermelons, too, so I know it wasn’t the taste!  SO—we had lots of watermelon for dessert last week!  I also found one recipe for watermelon and lime popsicles online, so made up a batch of those.  My teen daughter has been asking me to make up some fruit popsicles, and I am happy to do so but some fruits I just don’t want to blend up fresh fruit to freeze because I would far rather just eat it fresh.  But since we DID kinda have an over abundance of watermelon on our hands, she suggested that that might be a good time to try doing watermelon popsicles.  I agreed with her 100%, so we made up one small batch.  Lots of recipes online have added sugar, but adding sugar is NOT one of my health goals, so I kept looking around until I found one gal who made her fruit popsicles with simply blending four cups of watermelons with one tablespoon of lime juice, and freezing it.  So that is what we did!  I have no idea how good they will taste, because we haven’t eaten any of them yet—we have instead been eating the fresh watermelon!  So I will try and remember to let you know when we DO end up eating them!  It might be a few weeks first, though, because we are also enjoying fresh cantaloupe, peaches, and any other fresh in season fruit that we can get our hands on for a good price these summer months! 

These are the popsicles containers I have.  I just bought them years ago at Walmart, so nothing fancy but they work!  When wanting to eat a popsicle, you just run warm water on the outside of the one you want to eat, pulling gently on the handle until it comes out.  The recipe with four cups of watermelon blended filled two of these containers, so a total of eight popsicles. 

*Picked green beans and garden tomatoes.  I don’t have a huge garden, so just a small area of some green beans, but we have sure been enjoying the smidgen of beans that we are getting from it!  

Sadly, my zucchini plants all bit the dust, so no more zucchini’s.  I am not sure if it was something we did—as we did get busy and not water the garden for a week or two, but we WERE getting some rain here and there and the other things seem to be doing fine still, or if it was vine borers or some other pest or disease that did them in.  But I am thankful that I planted them, and the zucchini’s that we DID get were worth the price of the seed packet to me, and we still have a few seeds left that I could plant next year.  For that matter, I MIGHT even have time left to plant and grow more THIS summer, not sure.  But maybe!  I should look into that. . . 

And the large tomatoes—oh my!  I think I can honestly say these are the very best tasting tomatoes I have EVER had in all my life!  And we have been growing garden tomatoes every year that I have been married, which is over 30 years! These are called “Carbon,” and I got my seeds from Baker Seed company, though I have seen that they are sold out for this year.  I would definitely grow these again!!!  It is true that I had some problems with some of them being deformed or cracking or other such things, so at first I was thinking I would go back to other varieties for a large tomato.  But once I TASTED it, I forgave it for anything that it might have done (which was probably my fault anyway!) and I will grow these every year forever and ever and ever as long as I have seeds!  I have never saved tomato seeds before, but I am going to try and save seeds from these.  That could be a good skill for me to know how to do, especially with seeds running out early now a days!

Still on the “food front,” we also had several heads of lettuce leftover from our big haystack meal, so we have also been making lots of salads and such to use up the lettuce and not let it go bad.  And garden tomatoes pair perfectly with lettuce as well!

*I ordered two free tee shirts from LLBean!  I had some free “Bean Bucks” from LLBean, and when I learned that they had some Peanuts things I decided to check them out!  I do not normally enjoy being a “walking billboard” for anything—I am really not a person to wear a bunch of advertising on my clothing.  Nothing wrong with those who enjoy it, but it is just not me.  But if it is SNOOPY, it is a completely different thing!!!! I would have preferred a short sleeve tee shirt, because then I could wear it now when it is hot, but I didn’t care for the designs, or I would find a design I liked but it did not come in a color that I liked.  But when I saw THIS shirt, I fell in love!

I love hiking—especially with my daughter and hubby, so this design was perfect for me!  And FREE is double perfect, because I would never never never be able to afford to pay for a tee shirt what these are selling for!!!!  I mean, it is cute, but it IS “just” a tee shirt afterall!!!  

While on the site, I also saw this shirt, so I ordered it using my free Bean Bucks as well.

So those will be my new “wear in the Fall when the temps are nice and cool” fun things!

I also ended up using a free $10 from Kohl’s on some clearance under things, which is not nearly as exciting as free Snoopy tee shirts.  But I DO appreciate getting $10 off of a clearance item that started at $40, and it brought my price down to $8.00 so a blessing for sure.  Just not a Snoopy blessing, if you know what I mean! 

*I bought several sheets of stamps, since I found out that stamp prices are going up.  So at least I will have some stamps to take me through for a little bit, for those things that I must mail.  I am mailing less and less these days, but some things that is still the best way to go.

*I attended a free Zoom Bible Study.  This was my first time joining in, but it has been going on for over a year, ever since COVID started.  It was honestly really good—though I WAS starting to fall asleep at the end as in my time zone it ended at 10:00 p.m., which is the time I am usually showered and crawling in bed!  But I was blessed, and hope to join in again though not sure I will make it every week.  But it was fun to try, anyway, and see what it is like!

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

~Susan

Unbelievable: The First Gospel Promise

 

Hello Friends!

As I mentioned in my most recent Frugal Friday post, recently my hubby and I attended a series of meetings given by a non profit ministry in our area. We were SO blessed to hear the Word of God preached so clearly! We were unable to attend two of the evenings, so have been catching up with the recordings which have been posted already online. Today as I was listening to another of the four talks I missed, it dawned on me that with them being recorded and online, I can share them with all of you who read my blog. And that way, anyone who might also be interested can also be blessed! So here is the first meeting—I do hope you listen to it, and I hope it blesses you as it did me! The convocation was titled “Unbelievable,” because this gospel—this Good News—is unbelievably good! 

Here is the first meeting: The First Gospel Promise

Enjoy!

-Susan

Frugal Friday--Week of July 4-10, 2021

 

Hello Frugal Friends!

How was your week?  Mine was busier than usual!!! Filled to the brim and over flowing with good things, but I must confess I am happy to have a slower week coming up! 

I think the week could be summed up in three words:  "Family," " Food," and "Fellowship!" The main event that took up much time (though time well spent!) this week was my hubby and I attended some religious meetings that were being held in our town.  I expected them to be good--I was not expecting them to be fantastic!!!  They started Tuesday evening, and went each evening except for on Sabbath they were in the morning, afternoon, and evening.  My hubby and I were able to catch the Tuesday and Wednesday meetings.  We had been planning on also attending the Thursday and Friday evening meetings, but our adult son and his wife did not make it to our house quite as early as they had anticipated on Thursday evening, and we were going to be celebrating our daughter's birthday that evening so we skipped the meetings that night to be able to celebrate her birthday.  Fortunately, the meetings are recorded so we will be able to go back and catch the ones we missed.

The next day, on Friday, we celebrated our daughter's birthday with a trip to the Space Center in Huntsville.  This is one of our daughter's special places, and she had not been there in I believe ten years!  She absolutely loves the science behind everything!

She used to be quite seriously considering doing something such as Astrophysics, Astronaut, etc. I think at this point, she has shifted over more to considering majoring in Physics or Math or Chemistry.  We will see though!

My favorite part of the space center was simply spending time with her.

There were so many things to see, and our daughter likes to really read the signs on each item, that we got back rather late to attend Friday evening's meetings.  I had been hoping we could do both--but investing in her is way more important.

My niece and her hubby had driven up from Florida to attend the meetings, and they stayed with us.  It was delightful to see them both!  My niece came first, followed by her hubby, and when her husband arrived he had flowers for her.  She added her flowers to the flowers already on our counter that my other niece had been given by her boyfriend, so then we all enjoyed a large bouquet of flowers!

I am glad both nieces have a someone special in their lives, who is treating THEM special!  So I was able to enjoy free flowers!

During the pandemic, there is a college in Michigan that hosted both a Science Festival as well as an English Workshop online, over Zoom.  Most of the teams were signed up as schools, but if you were a homeschooler they just sort of randomly stuck homeschoolers together in a team.  Well, my daughter ended up in a team for the Science Festival with a young man from Michigan.  They enjoyed working together, and their team won FIRST PLACE among all the teams participating.  I was so proud of them and their hard work!  Then second semester, when the same college did the English Workshop, they requested being put on the same team so they worked together then as well--and that time their team tied with another team for first place!  Anyway, so this young man came down to our area with his family to attend the same meetings that my hubby and I were attending.  So he contacted my daughter and asked if they could possibly meet together face to face.  My daughter was delighted, and we arranged to meet him early before church on Sabbath.  He and his family are super nice, and we are delighted to have met another homeschool family!  So that was an extra surprise we were not expecting! 

The last night of the meetings, they had some leftover food that had been brought in to feed people on Sabbath, and they invited people to go back to the tables and take it home so it would not spoil.  I was delighted to be given two trays of peaches!  True, they need to be eaten up right away so they do not spoil, but with my family that is not going to be an issue! We have been enjoying them breakfast, lunch, and dinner! And since on Sabbath for lunch we had 13 people over to our house for lunch (down from 15, since my Florida niece and her hubby received a last minute invitation to go elsewhere), it is a blessing to have a bit of free food come into the house!  Some of the ways that we helped make it a bit more affordable to feed that many people is we used real dishes, so no expense out on paper plates and plastic silverware, and one of my nieces and my daughter cleaned up the entire kitchen afterwards.  We also used real cloth napkins--washable, cloth tablecloth--again, washable. Our menu was "Haystacks," which if you have not eve had Haystacks, is rather similar to a Taco Salad.  We put down in a row on my counter chips, rice, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, olives, avocado, salsa, and sour cream.  Then people just take a plate and walk down the row, "stacking" what they like on their plates. Some people also put cheese on their haystacks, really you can put whatever you like on them!  Some of the other people coming over to eat brought parts needed for the Haystacks, adding to what I was providing. So I did't have to come up with all of it for that many people. Then for dessert, we had watermelon.  Since it is watermelon "season," we were able to purchase these on sale. 

The week was a huge blessing--but I am also exhausted!  I have already started going back to listen to the messages I missed out on.  The conference was titled "Unbelievable," and sermon titles include ones such as "The First Gospel Promise," "God in the Flesh," and "A Judgement to Look Forward to."  We were there on Sabbath when "A Judgement to Look Forward to" was preached, and it was truly an amazing sermon!  They are ALL fantastic, but if you were to listen to just one, listen to that one!!!  Well, I have three more that I still need to catch up on, so I might change my mind on the ONE not to miss--can I have more than one not to miss???  God's love--His sacrifice for us, truly IS unbelievable!!! You can follow this link to listen to them free:

Unbelievable Conference

Well, that was it!  Time now to sleep for a week to catch up for all the late nights with the evening meetings! I am delighted that the ministry that was putting on the conference has moved to my neck of the woods.  The ministry is Light Bearers, and you can find lots of information and wonderful gospel truth on their website at:

Lightbearers

I learned they have bought property near here, and hope to build a studio they can record in, etc. I am thinking it might end up being a good place for some volunteer work, once their building is built! 

How was your week?  Are you attending any conferences or can-meetings this summer?  Our camp meeting at the beginning of the summer was cancelled due to COVID, so being able to attend this conference was extra special and sort of filled that spot.  I hope you are being able to gain needed encouragement and Bible truths this summer as well!  I would love to hear about it if you are, or about how your past week went!

~Susan

Frugal Friday—Week of June 27–July 3, 2021

 

Good Morning Frugal Friends!

How was your week? I felt like I was trying to play "catch up" at home after being gone so much the previous two weeks. It is funny, that during the school year both my hubby and myself are always feeling like "We will get _______ done during the summer when we have more time."  Then busy summer comes, and we say to ourselves "Once the school year starts and things settle down a bit we will get ______ done!" I guess overall this is a great problem to have, because it means we have a reason to get up in the morning! 

But on to my week! 

* I picked flowers from our garden.

*Picked another zucchini—this one hid and grew large!

*Read my daughter in law's History blog.  This week she wrote a post about Freedom.  It was excellent, I thought, and if anyone is interested in reading it for themselves you can find it here:

Freedom

*Bought new sheets at Home Goods.  We had some we loved, but sadly after many years the fabric has worn thin and a big hole has developed. it was finally time to replace them.  My daughter found some she recommended--she has ALWAYS had an interest in space, and she loves the astronaut sheets--but these would not exactly match the bedspread on my bed so they had to stay in the store while I purchased boring white sheets instead! 

*Read and returned a library book on Trauma.  The book was called "The Body Keeps the Score."  It was EXCELLENT, and I highly recommend if you have any interest in brain health, trauma, etc.  Now that said, it is not an easy book to read in that it does share examples of abuse the people have gone through.  Sad--just tragic! But I am thrilled to learn as much as I can about things that have been found to help traumatized people start to heal. 

*I found red grapes at Aldi's for .49 cents a pound!  Yes, you read that correctly!  In my area, this is unheard of--in fact, there has been only one other time ever that I found grapes for this price, also at Aldi's.  I think it was a general markdown as they had an overstock, it was not an item in the sale paper. I bought quite a few bags, but left some for others. We have been enjoying them this week and still have some in the fridge.  I put most of them in my produce saver boxes, which I have found really DO help extend the life of produce, and in the meantime we ate first the grapes not in the produce boxes.

*My daughter played in a concert given by the East Tennessee Symphony Orchestra.  This is a volunteer orchestra in our area. They have a very nice free concert at our town's Commons.  It was the first concert they have been able to give since before COVID, and it was very VERY wonderful to see and hear people be able to get together again to make music together and use their talents to bless others!

One very sad thing happened--and please keep this in your prayers.  The last ETSO rehearsal, the night before the concert, one of the two conductors for the orchestra experienced a heart attack there at the rehearsal. He was literally ten feet away from where I was sitting.  Not being a medically trained person myself, there was almost nothing I could do to help him--though I WAS able to give information about the building and location of the building we were in to the gal who called 911.  She didn't know the name of the college building we were meeting in, and at least I knew that information so was able to give that to be passed on to the 911 operator.  Praise God, there was a doctor who was there playing in the orchestra, as well as several nurses and a music teacher who is a part time ambulance driver. They all started working on this gentleman immediately.  They literally saved his life--it would have been too long by the time the paramedics were able to reach us. I am happy to be able to share that the gentleman was revived, and went on to the hospital where it was discovered he had a 100% blockage in a major artery to his heart.  He had a stent put in, and they were going to be doing further testing to determine the extent of the damage done.  I learned later that he is a retired band director from the area high school, so you can imagine he is a very well loved individual.  While I did not know him personally since we homeschool our daughter and have not used the local public school, just listening to him during the different rehearsals it was obvious that he loved people and loved music.  I am grateful his life was spared.  It has made me really want to get trained in CPR, just on that odd chance that I may be somewhere in the future where someone needed help.  If there was a doctor or nurse or other medical person around, great!  But if there wasn't--if I was the only one--well, I would like to be able to help.  Sadly, so far the prices I have found on CPR classes are out of my price range.  If I was working and had income coming in and this was part of my job training, I could use my job salary to pay for the CPR course.  But as a full time homemaker and homeschool mom, I have no other income coming in.  If anyone knows of an affordable was to gain these skills please do share them with me.

The remaining conductor led the entire concert--instead of it being split as originally planned.  We know for certain that Mr. D. would have wanted the concert to go on.  He had been SO excited about live music again!

If you would like to hear a little of the concert, here is a clip I took of their last song.  I was standing outside the building here, surrounded by others in my community and watching the fireworks that had started.  It was lovely!

Stars and Stripes

Here is another clip I took from earlier in the program, with a friend of ours doing a remarkable solo!

Fiddler on the Roof

Well, that about sums up my week!  How was YOUR week?  What did you find to do to save money and bless your family or others?  And please do keep Mr. D. in your prayers, and share with me if you are aware of an affordable way to learn CPR.  It literally may save someone's life--I saw this happen before my eyes this week!

~Susan