Here's our frugal list for the week -
* Received our Flybuys vouchers in the mail. We hadn't received any for quite a few months and Darren was worried Flybuys had forgotten him ( or we don't spend enough money ). Darren has already sorted through them and worked out which ones we can use and in what order.
* Made up two bottles of diluted Dynamo laundry liquid. I'm trialing 1 capful of liquid to 500mls of water.
* Saved a gift bag to use for men's greeting cards. Saved a piece of tissue paper to reuse at a later date for a present.
* Found a bargain in Aldi. They were clearing out hand pumps of antibacterial hand wash for 49 cents each. I bought 4 and will put them with presents.
* Made lots of pita chips for snacks.
* Bought a long sleeve top in Savers for $5.20
* Gratefully received a tax refund.
* Jessica bought lots of nail polishes for her pamper part business. In the boxes was gold colored cardboard. She saved it all for me to make or decorate cards.
* Kept the heating temp a little lower to help offset the dryer usage costs.
* Wrote a menu plan for the next four weeks.
* Froze four single serves of leftovers. I getting quite a stockpile so I've written freezer meals into the new menu plan to make room in my freezer.
* Made lots of mini quiches using ingredients I had on hand and silverbeet from the garden.. Some will be taken to a function Darren and I are going to on Sunday. The rest went into the freezer for snacks.
* Cooked all meals from scratch.
* Did the monthly grocery shopping on Tuesday. I recently increased our grocery budget from $200 to $250 a month. So far I've only spent just over $100 and put $40 into the meat fund ( waiting on specials )
* Added a few more greeting cards to my blog shop. I now have pretty dress cards for sale.
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| Homemade mini quiches |
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| Silverside and roast veg for the freezer stockpile. |
Dress greeting cards for sale in my blog shop
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Health costs can sure add up, Wendy. We are having a year where we've had quite a few extra & unexpected medical expenses. Even with private health cover, it still gets expensive! This is my list for the week:
ReplyDelete* all meals either made here at home or used up from freezer stash
* baked gingerbread cakes and a raspberry/coconut slice for school
* made simple focaccia for last Sunday lunch & will make another for tomorrow's lunch too.
* found a new little local fruit & vegie shop with some good prices
* used gift card to buy new pjs for my son
* continued knitting washcloths for gifts
* found some gift ribbon wrapped around driftwood, reusable.
* dug up, separated Agapanthus - lots of new plants for free:)
Have a great weekend, Wendy.
Hi Meg, gingerbread cakes sound delicious! Could you please share the recipe. I'm keen to find as many easy, frugal baking recipes as I can. Many thanks. Rachel
DeleteA great well rounded list this week Meg.
DeleteHi Wendy, a few dollars here and there always adds up very quickly doesn't it? Your mini quiches look lovely and what a great bargain you had a aldi!Here's what we got up to this week:
ReplyDelete- someone posted on facebook that our local coles was selling 3 star 500g beef mince for $2 each. Hubby and I took advantage of this and stocked up our freezer
- bought 3 whole chickens at half price
- on another day someone else posted on facebook that our local woolies was selling chicken breast for $4.5 per kg (almost unheard of in my area) and we stocked up on that too!
- Gratefully received two avocados
- bought large bin liners on sale for half price at aldi (for our big kitchen bin, all other bins get bread bags)
- diluted some fabric softener by half
- Tried to line dry clothes where possible
- made all meals from scratch and took lunches to work where possible
-Gratefully received a $50 petrol gift card, the petrol prices are set to go low again soon so I'll see how much petrol I can get with it!
I can't remember everything I did but our big freezer is bursting with all the meat we got for a great bargain this week. I'm grateful we have the slush funds to do this when needed. My family won't be hungry any time soon!
Amy
Wow !!! What a bargain on the mince Amy. If I was there I'd clear the shelf - giggle giggle. It's great that you are using your slush funds. That's exactly what it's for. Well done to you.
DeleteHello, i thought you might like this. Alison
ReplyDeletehttps://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=870744736425523&substory_index=0&id=139558599544144
Sorry Alison, the link you sent isn't showing anything. Maybe you could send it through My Abundant Life's Facebook pages as a PM.
DeletePM not working. There is a fb page called Re-Scape.com great ideas.
ReplyDeleteI've liked it and will lo k at it more when I get the time.
DeleteLove your dress cards!
ReplyDeleteI have a question. Do you do anything special when you freeze your single serves? When I was sick last winter, expecting a 2-3 month recovery from surgery, I prepared and froze about 25 dinners. Most of them weren't real good after freezing. Do you have any suggestions?
We divided our time this week between working on our home that's for sale and living in our vacation home. Too much take-out food during the work period. However, we've been cooking and eating at home while at the lake. Using up leftovers, too--I added some cooked, finely chopped pork roast to my meatloaf tonight. I'm still eating down my pantry and freezer and only had to top up milk and perishables for this week.
I only washed two loads this week. One was a wool blanket dried on the porch railing and the other was a load of clothes currently drying on the new clothes horse.
Used the one hour "fast wash" cycle on the DW for every load. The cycle is normally 2 hours 35 minutes long.
We don't have air conditioning here, so no temptation to turn it on. We have ceiling fans that help a lot.
I'm not a big spender, but this lake town only has 200 people and few places to spend...so it's not surprising that I haven't spent anything this week here.
Best wishes to all for a good and frugal week ahead.
Maxine, how did your freezer meals turn out ? I don't do anything special but some don't tastes as good as fresh cooking.
DeleteI try to defrost in the fridge overnight. If I can't do this, I add a little water to the frozen meal when defrosting in the microwave. It gets defrosted / heated on a dinner plate with a microwave lid over the top.
Well, lasagne freezes well. Macaroni and cheese freezes well before you bake it if you make it really soupy. When it has thawed, poke a few holes in the top and pour in some milk. This really helps. In general, I've found that the soupier the dish, the better it freezes--chili, marinara sauce, stews, soups. However, I make braised chicken and it didn't freeze well at all, even though it was swimming in liquid. The veggies and chicken were all too soft and--dare I say it?--kinda slimy. Also, the recipes with ground beef in them taste kind of musty to me. If anyone out there is freezing successfully, I'd love to know it.
DeleteForgot to mention (and been too embarrassed to say) but I found a large piece of cheese that had gotten pushed to the back of the fridge and was a solid piece of mold. I sliced off all sides and ended up with about half as much cheese.This was a disgusting job. I don't like to freeze cheese, because of the texture, but I decided it wouldn't matter if I used it for cheese sauce. So, I thawed the cheese today to make cheese sauce tomorrow. We will have macaroni and cheese for dinner and use the rest of the cheese sauce on cooked vegetables until it is gone. BTW, if you are cutting moldy cheese, wipe your knife with vinegar as you go and you won't be depositing mold spores when you make the next cut. Clean your cutting board with vinegar, too. And keep an eye on what's in the back of the refrigerator!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you mentioned the vinegar. My first thought was transferring the mould. Frozen cheese is good for sprinkling over a casserole before cooking in the oven.
DeleteI kept the heater off all day, every day until the evening. Instead I just added layers of clothing.
ReplyDeleteAlso incorporated a lot of freezer meals into our meal plan last week as we had built up a little 'freezer meal stockpile.'
Made another batch of laundry liquid and sent another batch home with Mum.
Kylie
Well done for keeping the heater off. I'm sure your next heating bill will reflect your efforts. We've been using blankets to keep warm.
DeleteOur freezer meal stockpile is building up too.
Not a great week here. Still playing catch up with the bills from when I had no work. I had to buy Caitlin a dress and shoes for her senior formal as we don't have a good aray of op shops or a savers it meant a trip an hour away to Geelong's shopping centre and a paying out $150. And then I received a huge gas bill from when my father in law was here and had the heater on 24/7. So feeling a bit sorry for myself and a little bit panicked.
ReplyDeleteBut I know with God's help a solution will be found.
Janine, a bare bones budget might help you get through a tough patch.
DeleteDear Wendy, Your cards are gorgeous! Also the mini quiches are lovely! Yum!
ReplyDeleteI really agree about being good stewards and savings. Also about health itself is a good investment and overall a massive savings if we can stay fit, active and healthy this is the biggest bonus! Having energy just to do all our work is a big blessing. Also I love the savings that I can invest in other savings to end up with even bigger savings! I am always trying to explain this idea but it is like saving doing something then buying a crockpot then using that rather than getting take away. The first saving might have been thirty dollars. But by the end of a year the savings might easily be a few thousand dollars as that is what some people spend on takeaway. Having a crockpot means when you are too tired to cook it is already cooked so you don't need takeaways! this is just a crazy example but I know you get it! I am always looking for ways to expand my savings.
Have a great new week, with love Annabel.xxx
I understand what you are getting at. So many people say they don't have time to cook a meal. It only takes 10 minutes to put everything in the slow cooker in the morning yet saves an hour at night and possibly $50 on takeaway.
DeleteDear Wendy, that's a great week. Your mini quiches and dress cards look wonderful. My daughter and I baked a lot this week. We made a baked passionfruit cheesecake, which we enjoyed as a treat all week, and will do so again this week. We priced a baked cheesecake at Coles in the specialty baking section and it was $38!! Ours cost less than $5. We also made cookies and glass noodle salad for lunches, and whizzed up a batch of Egg spread which makes 2 eggs go such a long way as a sandwich spread. We love a good baking session and it really does save money. Especially when you go out and realise how expensive baked goods can be! Mimi xxx
ReplyDeleteBaking does save a small fortune and tastes so much better than store bought.
DeleteHi Wendy,
ReplyDeleteI had a fruitful weekend just gone. Saturday I baked 3 date nut loaves, a fruit cake and some chocolate brownies for the freezer. On Sunday I made 7 large bottles of Chow Chow. This is a sweet mustard pickle which is chunky. It is absolutely delicious with cold corned beef. Did some washing with my homemade laundry detergent and cleaned a rug with my electric carpet cleaner with some diluted miracle cleaner with good results. Then on Sunday I got to have a well deserved 'nana' before returning to work on Monday. Thanks for your inspiration Wendy. Julee
You had a very industrious week Julee. That Miracle Spray just keeps on working doesn't it.
DeleteIt's really great week. For me, it would be little things... I'm new to budgeting. This week I want to come up with a food plan, I hope it would help me avoid eating outside. It's my huge problem, along with food waste. I think it's necessary to stop wasting money, no matter if you have your own company or if you just want to live your life and don't feel guilty about your spending. I also think that if you can't save on your own, you're going to waste huge amounts of money while owning a business...
ReplyDeleteA menu plan will certainly help save you money and waste. I have a few menu plans in the thrifty living section at the top of my blog.
Delete