Sorry I have been AWOL this week. I had another week that didn't go as planned! We all know what they say about "the best laid plans".
We have finally had a week with no rain. I have been using rain water from the barrels for the plants.
NO I still haven't managed to wrangle that darn old groundhog - it is one smart animal. I have caught 2 opossums and have taken them to the woods for release. Oh, I also caught one of my kitties! She wasn't happy. I had bought a bigger trap - and she was curious - OOPSY! I found her pretty quick. She walks way around it now! Lesson learned.
My frugal happenings this week other than normal things were;
- Line drying laundry again - gee I love the smell
- I canned 11 pints of pickles (bread & butter and kosher) from brine that I had left over from last week. I used some of the misshaped cukes for this. Pints will make nice gifts this holiday season.
- Picking and using LOTS of garden produce. Sharing it as well.
- I did a sewing project for my brother - he was thrilled with the results
- I managed to take advantage of a good sale at Kroger this week. Got 5 jars of JIF peanut butter for .99/jar for the stockpile. I also found 5 - 1 lb. boxes of big name pasta on clearance for .49/box. Use date of 2017!
- I did buy a larger trap for $26, but it will last a lifetime.
- Stayed home 5 days. No money or gas spent/used.
I sure do love those things - they are like candy to me. I can't pass the bowl without grabbing 2 or 6 to eat!!
I hope you all have a wonderfully productive and safe week.
God bless.
Hey Cheryl, I forgot to save my post and lost it when I wasn’t logged into gmail, sorry it has taken me so long to comment! I am still here and I haven’t forgotten your blog! I noticed a few of our early posters have returned to another blog site…I lurk but haven’t seen many new tips to incorporate into my life, although some CVS advice from one member has been helpful. I talked with our local CVS store manager and he was very willing to walk me through how to work the Extra Care Bucks, specials, and other good offers CVS carries. So talking to a store manager is my frugal tip of the day, they know best how to help their customers!
ReplyDeleteI really think we need to channel Bill Murray for you on that groundhog! Nefarious they are and sneaky too. I hope you don’t need to put barbed wire up around the plants! Poor kitty – give her an extra treat of course!
WE’ve been keeping up with the line drying. One thing that helps is that I pull the cord out of the socket so 1) thunderstorms don’t zap our electronics in our washer/dryer and 2) it reminds me to stop and get some exercise and go upstairs and hang that laundry! I was at my sister’s and she had the old fashioned clothespins that look like soldiers, only hers had wire wrapped around the ‘hip’ of the clothespin. Those pins are ones I used when I was in elementary school and hanging laundry was one of my chores. I have got to source those pins because the cheap spring type keep popping and certainly are ineffective at holding a bath rug on the clothesline when the wind starts blowing! I could only find them on eBay and so put a bid in on a set. There were a few others available too.
I was gifted with five green zucchini baseball bats, two from a bus buddy and three from a fellow researcher! With no bag to carry them home in, I borrowed a pillowcase from our lab (we have beds for our research participants), tied a knot for a carry handle and lugged them with me until I was able to get home, my goodness, free zucchini and free exercise! I’ll be drying some for winter minestrone soups, jamming some with that pineapple recipe you posted, shredding and freezing some (using our heavy duty zip lock pipette tip bags, very food safe!), can some zucchini pickles (but how to make them CRISP ???), and then making some chocolate zucchini bundt cakes for the freezer and summer picnics. I had looked at the bus stop ditch plant I was keeping an eye on, a volunteer zucchini, so I don’t have to think about that one anymore (ditch plants can contain toxins from road runoff). It will be a busy weekend for sure.
What sewing project did you do for your brother? I keep a Pinterest of the ones I want to do this winter.
Baseball bat zucchini's! Hey you had protection on your way home too. We actually like the zucchini pickles the best. They seem to keep their form better over a year or 2. They really absorb the flavoring.
DeleteFunny I lurk there too!!! LOL I usually just laugh, as the ones who scream frugal the loudest are the ones who AREN'T.
I have never been big on doing the CVS thing. it just seems like you have to spend a lot of time doing all that - and I figure my time is worth something too. If I can go in and get something quick and free I am all for it.
My good sale of the week? None really, bought some stuff at WMart and saved an additional $5 using Ibotta, Checkout 51, and WMart Savings Catcher: every little bit helps. But when I divided the grocery total by the number of items, it was $1.89 per item, that is way too high for me! But then I didn’t coupon much either. We get our pork this month so that will be purchased out of our savings account.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t been a Good Girl (see grocery paragraph above), but I haven’t been Bad either! I continue to borrow books from the library, popular ones I can’t get locally I use our university’s inter library loan service and so have been able to keep up with my daughter’s and my reading lists (she needs to learn to borrow, not buy, books!) Well, actually, her boyfriend buys them to her Kindle which he uses, then shares them with her iPad, then she shares with me on my iPad but I am a faster reader so I wanted to read ahead to the book she was on and so just borrowed it so we can now read at the same time. Our library has DVDs also, so with the cancellation of HBO and Starz on our triple play, I will use the library DVDs this winter to make up for ‘television movies.’
Volunteer plants in by garden are still alive. Do you find that the volunteers that come up later, are hardier and produce more? Me, too! And my cherry tomatoes are the best afternoon snack I can think of!
My volunteer have gotten so big and they appear to be the healthiest plants! Yep, I love those cherry toms too. G said he wished regular tomatoes tasted like cherry ones.
DeleteIt is amazing how many TV (cable) shows are free for the watching on the computer. There are several shows I love, and they are all full feature on computer. Now it may be a few weeks behind, but heck if you didn't have cable it wouldn't matter.
I have never done those other apps either on money saving. Well to be fair, I don't have a fancy phone to do apps with.