Tuesday April 29th 2014

Good Morning!!

Its been just over a week since my last post. Brandy over at theprudenthomemakerblog.blogpost.com posted her weekly Frugal recapm she is so encouraging in her blogging and her website is equally helpful, she encourages us all to learn from each other in our sharing of our frugal ways and so I thought I'd share here some of the things I've done this past week to help stretch the paycheck that my husband works hard for just a little bit farther!!

Here we go:
Last  Friday(April 18, 2014) was payday, it should have also been my monthly grocery shopping weekend but I have stretched what we have in the freezer and pantry and I know I will be able to go all this week with what we have on hand. Thus making it a full 2 weeks past when I should have done my shopping. Part of me wants to see how far I can go, but the other part of me thinks this was a good exercise and maybe I should be working on  filling up the larder so that if we have another winter like the one that just passed I won't have to be out in the cold getting our groceries every month???

I did make some small purchases, for instance I bought cool whip for some desserts I had for Easter Dinner, a fresh loaf of bread for lunch sandwiches, etc, things like that.

But back to Easter Dinner:

Dh's gram gave us a small Turkey, She also gave us 2 bags of little potatoes, I bought an additional bag so that we would have plenty for our Easter meal. I put a cream sauce on them, they were delicious!! And she brought the hot bread for dinner.
My mother baked and brought a Ham.
In addition to the Meats and potatoes, I made stuffing, green beans, corn, and deviled eggs.
We had green onions from the garden to eat fresh and I used some in my cooking.

For dessert I made an apple pie, 2 pumpkin pies, a pan of strawberry delight and a bowl of Fluff ( or Watergate salad for those who aren't familiar with Fluff)

Our Easter Meal cost me very little other than my time to prep and cook it all and we had 10 for dinner and dessert!!

With the leftovers I sent a full plate of dinner and dessert home with my Pap, as well as I gave him a Pumpkin pie for his Easter gift from us. I sent a full plate of dinner home with My hubands Gram., I sent a full plate of Dessert home with my Mother.

We(my family of 5) had a repeat of Easter Dinner on Monday night from sunday's leftovers, my husband took Ham  or Turkey sandwiches in his lunch all last week, and my daughter and I had some ham and sides for lunch last week as well. My boys had some of the sides heated up for an after school snack.

Tuesday we went over to my mothers so my hubby could use the garage and my dads tools to change the oil in his car, I made a big batch of tacos to take with us to share with my mom. The kids and I had leftover tacos for lunch as well as for after school snacks and I still had some taco meat to freeze for another day, its not enough to make meal for the 5 of us but its enough that I'm not going to waste it. I will either use it for a quick lunch for my daughter and I or save it for the next time I have a potato bar or feel like making burritos.

I used the leftover chopped onions from taco night in a pot of spaghetti sauce. I also make Manicotti that night and only used a half a box of noodles, I went ahead and cooked the whole box, stuffed them and then froze the unused manicotti for another meals, we used leftover meatballs in sauce that I had frozen previously and I made a batch of quick rolls to go with dinner that night.

I was able to hang out several loads of clothes on the clothes line, and I use hm laundry detergent for over a year now and love the recipe we are using. I tried HM Laundry detergent before but it just didn't seem to get my clothes as clean and fresh smelling as I wanted, this new recipe is much much better and the savings is well worth the very itty bit of time and effort it takes to put it together.

I went though a bag of hand me downs that were given to us and pulled out several things  for my daughter. The clothes I didn't keep I passed on to our church mobile clothing ministry.

My children and I started some seeds for both vegetables and flowers. So far the Sunflowers are popping up but nothing else has, its been cool though so maybe that is the culprit??

I was given 3 cases of 1/2 pint mason jars, they were used as favors in my best friends wedding in November, she filled them with candy and decorated the lids with a sticker. I will lose the lids when I take the favors apart but the rings and jars are perfect.

I'm sure there is more but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

What have you done to save money and be frugal this week?? Do tell!!!