What Frugal Thing .....- Part II

[mom-from-missouri]

I haven't done it yet, but am getting ready in a couple hours to take home the babies I watch on Mondays. When she pays me, I am going to stop at the hardware store on the way home and pick up another bag of potting soil. With that, I will be starting some more of my seeds for this years garden.
I should have had enough soil, but repotted a plant, and used most.
The seeds I am starting are leftover from last season. Ones I bought for a nickle a package at the end of the summer.

[elessar78]

Our dryer kicked it. We looked on craigslist and found a nice, used set for under 300 instead of buying new from Sears. We probably could've waited longer and found a better price but we have a baby so laundry needs to be done more regularly than if it was just us.

[marvholly]

I called my landline provider on Monday. Made a change to my service that I should have done YEARS ago and, since it just went up in price (again), I will save $9.75/month=97.50 for the remainder of this year.

I hand washed 3 dry clean only items and saved myself nearly $10. I do have to iron 2 pieces. Stopped at the tailor on Mon as a really good pair of all wool pants had a broken zipper. He fixed them at no charge.

I have been taking advantage of the Safeway coupon for $2 off any package of Ranchers Reserve beef. So far I have gotten a NY strip steak, 1 lb of skirt steak and 1.5 lb of round steak. Total cost of the 3 is <$2 and gives 8 servings.

[marvholly]

Tue was a no drive/no spend day. Since I had found some items in my kitchen freezer(part of my previous Decluttering) I used the tofu Tue to make a stir fry w/veggies I had on hand for my lunch and I ate the salami I had frozen from a deli ends pkg for dinner w/a salad.

Our HIGH temp Tue was 15. Today is going to be even colder w/a lot more wind so it will be another no drive/no spend day.

Hearing oil spot market has been down the last couple days - about $2/barrel. Wonder when/if gasoline prices will come down. Will need to pay more attention to this.

[mom-from-missouri]

Started planting my garden....(hope the ground hog was right). I have my garlic started and am getting my "pots" (egg cartons) ready to next plant my squashs, pumpkins and watermelon. I am using left over seeds from last year, so hopefully a good part of this years garden will be free. I am making a square foot and raised garden this year, so little to no fuel for the tiller.
My plants I am starting now will be living on the top of my refrigerator and in the master bath garden tub until planting time.

[marvholly]

I have not gone out the last 2 days because it is SOO cold here and it is even colder this morning but I HAVE to go out. I have a $2 WAG RR that expires today. I am debating about eggs, green olives (cook often w/these) & black olives (love to just eat, on salad, on pizza). Since eggs often go on sale here at or below the WAG price and I still have a full dozen on hand I am thinking olives since they are a treat not a necessity. So, while I will be driving it is WAAAY <5 miles and except for sales tax I will not be spending anything.

I have been really good about trying new recipes I have cut out or gotten on the net. Today it is Carne Asada as I got a 3 serve pkg of skirt steak at Safeway CHEAP (Safeway, 0.17 after Joy of Football coupon)!! Fri it is a new chicken recipe as I have a BUNCH of boneless chk breasts in the freezer & all the other ingredients on hand. Sat it will be a veg/pasta/olive recipe I made a couple weeks ago as I am going to roast some veggies today to go w/the steak and I have both green & black olives open w/a few left in each container. This will also help declutter my fridge.

[marvholly]

Swithed the Fri/Sat dinner plans as I will be out much of today and the chicken is a stove top prep recipe.

I have wanted something sweet & good for several days. Thur, while I was roasting veg for Thur & Fri dinners I cut up 2 apples I had gotten VERY cheap on a raincheck several weeks ago, put them in 3 small baking dishes, topped them w/ a flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, butter crumble and baked while I had the veggies in the oven. Cheap. Reasonably healthy. Good.

Today is a shop/errands/visit my Dad day. The enire rt is about 15ish mi but I will pretty much get all my shopping done. All my meals are prepped for today as I am “treating” myself to Taco Bell (free taco + item from value menu) and everything is cooked for dinner + an extra serving of pasta. Takes just as long to boil water & cook 1 serve of pasta as 2.

[Ima saver]

No spend day yesterday!!

[mom-from-missouri]

Mon ended up being a no spend day. My fruit/veg market planned stop resulted in NO purchases. The pea pods I wanted were price ok (but quality was poor) and they no longer have a bulk bag of bean sprouts to select what you need. They are 2 lb bags or NOTHING. Since I only wanted 1/3-1/2 lb I chose NOTHING.

I found an online source for various seeds, to sprout your own.
I have ordered other items from this company before, but never the sprouting seeds.

Indoor Gardening, Aero Garden, Herb Gardens, AeroGardens, Seed Kits

[mom-from-missouri]

Since I used up the "soup bag", I just started another one with less than one serving of corn left over from lunch. I will continue to put leftover veggies in this bag in the freezer until it is full. Then, I put it in the crockpot, add meat (from my leftover meat bag in the freezer), some beef or chicken stock and leftover soup.

Whenever I cook meat, I save the juices/stock and use that for my gravies and soups.

[nanamom]

I desperately needed some new tops. I went to J C Penny's sale and found some for 2.97 each. I used a coupon for $10.00 off anything I charged to my card so bought 4 new tops that I liked. I charged $1.98 which I will pay off as soon as the bill comes in. Each top ended up costing .47!! i saved over $140.00 dollars. I was feeling pretty frugal when I got home!

[marvholly]

I follow several grocery/drug store only shopping blogs, 2 not in my area and 2 in my area. I cannot tell you how many things I would have missed this week if not for these blogs: Dominicks has fake crab & there is a $1 coupon online so 8 oz costs 0.50 (and I will pass them today, Fri and Sun). A single purchase is >2 meals of protein and I will get 2 pkg = 5 meals for $1 (0.20/serving), Jewel has Tribe Humus BOGO and I have a $2 coupon = cheap healthy snack or lunch w/some cut veggies which I always have on hand. At Meijer, I do not get their ad as I live 7-8 miles from the closest BUT;

I do not normally shop at Meijer. It is not on my regular route BUT it is across the street from my Dad’s senior apt building. This week they have a HUGE list of stuff I want AND I also have significant coupons on all the items. I need more pasta like another hole in my head but since it is FREE (except for tax) I will buy 6 boxes (number of coupons I have) and donate to the local food pantry. Shelf price of everything I want is about $23. Sale price is $16.67. My OOP will be $6.30 + tax. That is a savings of >73% on reasonably healthy stuff I do use.

There are quite a few other blogs I follow about finance, organizing and cooking/recipes. My mornings are VERY busy.

Guess I need to do a better job of reviewing the ads but then why bother when these bloggers do it all for me and post the day the ads come out and 1 day before the sales start? AND they do all the coupon research so I don’t have to.

I LOVE my new coupon caddy (bought at Salvation Army for about 10% of retail). It is a bit large & heavy for my purse BUT it has enough sections so I can devote one to coupons I plan to use this week. Makes finding them & checking out MUCH faster.

[marvholly]

I had a GREAT shopping day on Thur. I had to go to another burb and then into Chicago itself. I passed 4 Dominicks on my travel route. I bought 1 pkg of the imitation crab at the burb store. Of the 3 stores in the city 2 were in poor/minority areas. These 2 had GREAT deals on NY strip steak in the clearance bins. I got 4 steaks totaling 1.67 lb. The steaks will provide 6 meals and the crab 4 meals. My total OOP was $0.99 inc tax for the steaks & crab.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

I have stocked up on 6 ounce canned sardines which my husband loves. $1 at Family Dollar, Polar brand. The cashier was amused at how many I bought and told me the truck would be coming to restock them in the store on Monday if I wanted more. Ha-ha.

Almost daily at the end of my exercise walk, I stop in that store to look for garden seeds (not out yet), as they sometimes sell them $0.20 per pack. Last year I was able to buy European cucumber seeds for $0.20 when I usually pay about $3.60 for a pack.

[Alan_MoneySanity]

I did the same frugal thing I do every Friday. I throw all my paper recycling into the compost pile instead of putting it out for garbage. In another month, I 'll use my broadcast spreader to fertilize my grass with all the compost I've made this winter. Saves money and the yard looks great.Most likely helps the environment too.