We had plenty to eat and Eugene's Mum and extended family provided lots of Russian delights. The night consisted of fun games, food, speeches, food, cake cutting, food, dancing, food and present opening.
Here are the frugal tasks I've squeezed into my full days -
* Jessica found a few as new coats and dress clothes at Savers op shop she can use for her teaching rounds. Because she was there on a Sunday she received 20% off for being a student.
* Made lots of sausage rolls and mini quiches for the engagement party.
* Mended a cardigan.
* Baked four loaves of wholemeal bread with extra goodness.
* Gratefully received lots of bread bags that I repurposed into bathroom bin liners.
* Fed lots of bread crusts to the chickens.
* Made a double batch of chocolate brownies for the engagement party. Some was leftover which we enjoyed for afternoon tea. The brownie was a huge hit at the party with requests for the recipe.
* Bought bunches of flowers for the engagement party at the Dandenong Market. Baby's breath was half the price of florist's quoted prices. The flowers were used to decorate the tables. I arranged them in the Fowler's Vacola glass jars I picked up a couple of months ago at Savers for 60 cents each. Jessica and Eugene will be keeping them as vases for their home.
* Packed salad lunchboxes to eat while we were decorating the hall. Others went out and got takeaway ( which is fine but we enjoyed the fresh salad ).
* Saved the shower and washing machine water for each next load of washing.
* Dried all but one load of washing on the line. I needed to do a load of washing last Friday night ( the night before the engagement party ). To make life easy and to avoid clothes horses with extra bodies coming in and out of our home, the dryer was the best option ( for my sanity ). I don't like using the dryer but that night it really helped me.
* Ate leftovers form the party for two days. There were lots of carrot sticks leftover so I diced and placed them in a beef casserole.
* We received our electricity bill for the last three months. There was a decrease of just under $20 for the same period last year. This doesn't seem like much but power costs have increased considerably in twelve months. Our wise usage has offset all increases. The little usage table on the bill says we use less than the target amount of one person. Not bad when there are two, sometimes three living here.
* Bought discounted bread at Coles for 38 cents a loaf. Store bought bread tastes better with bbqs and is handy to have in the freezer.
* Converted another $10 worth of Flybuys points into dollars on our card.
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| Engagement party table flowers |
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| The happy couple |
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| Photo wall |
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| The letters I found for $1 each |
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| At the start of the night. |
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| Table and wall decos by me. |
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| Speeches |
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| Eugene's little brother making a speech. |
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| The two families together. |
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| Engagement cake ( table flowers from the op shop ) |
Present table with letters and flowers I found at the op shop.
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| Speeches area. |
Hi Wendy,
ReplyDeleteYou certainly have fitted a lot into your life recently. You really are 'Super Wendy'. The engagement photos are gorgeous and classy and the cake was magnificent. Did you make the cake? Hopefully you can put your feet up a little this weekend and take life a bit slower until Monday when it will be back to full speed. Congratulations on a job well done - as usual!
Thankyou Julee. My sister made the cake. There are some things I can't do and cake decorating is one of them.
DeleteI'm am relaxing this weekend with a card making day at a friend's place.
Fiona a big congratulations to you and your family for all the hard work you put into organising the Engagement Party, it all looks fantastic. You are so inspiring doing everything on a budget, yet having it all look so lovely, well done :)
ReplyDeletePS love the photo wall with the creeping vine weaved through it.
Thankyou Cheryl. Some things we had to pay good money for so we tried to offset the costs by sourcing from op shops and discount stores. The vines came from a family friend of Eugene's.
DeleteEverything looked so beautiful. Great job. We had a busy but fun week. We helped at a Cancer Fundraiser and won prizes too.my week is here:https://mcoia.blogspot.com/2018/04/my-frugal-list-week-of-april-9-2018.html
ReplyDeleteThankyou so much.
DeleteSo much love and attention went into that lovely engagement party. Best wishes to the happy couple, they are blessed to belong to such supportive families.
ReplyDeleteThankyou for your kind words Veronica.
DeleteIt looks like it was a lovely celebration, Wendy. I love the photo wall, a wonderful idea! Meg:)
ReplyDeleteEverything looks just lovely, Wendy! What a wonderful time you have created while still being frugal! A reminder that frugal does not equal “deprived”!!!
ReplyDeleteThis has been a good week. I got over $65 Just from selling 3 little things on eBay that I not only wasn’t using, but actually had forgotten that I had! It was nice to declutter and make money at the same time! Easy-peasy!!
My favorite nursery had their 4 pack veggie plants for 89 cents so even though sowing my own seeds would be cheaper (and I will do that too), this will speed up the first harvest so I feel like it was worth it!
I planted broccoli, cabbage, two varieties of kale, Romaine lettuce and red onions.
I also bought a thornless blackberry bush and added that to the 20 foot raised bed. My blackberry bush is almost in the middle of the bed and I found a wrought iron open pavilion kind of thing that fit directly around my blackberry bush and looks quite decorative! The “pavilion/cage was one we rescued from the alley that was set to be tossed out by a neighbor! Personally, I think it looks quite nice!
Since last week I sold the final quilt I made using vintage 1930’s hand pieced blocks, I got out the basket with other blocks that I got from the same estate and put a dozen of them together for a pinwheel design quilt. I am ready to sandwich it with batting and backing and get it quilted up! I also pulled out 4 nine patch blocks in pinks and an 81 Patch scrappy block for the center and after alternating with 4 plain blocks, I will quilt it into a baby girl quilt and also put it up for sale! I think I still have 30+ blocks left in the basket with a different block pattern that I will put together later when I have some free time! It’s fun bringing these vintage blocks into a finished quilt while making some money at the same time!
I bought a 20 pound box of baby carrots ( individually packed into 3 oz bags ) and landed 6 bags at a time onto each of my 9 dehydrator trays! They dried beautifully and I now have lots of carrots to go into my dry soup and stew mixes!
I used the homemade anti-static cling spray on Sunday for a skirt that had previous been sticking to my legs as I walked and Voila!, it worked great. Good thing too because I made 2 spray bottles of it!!
Read some more books from the library! Every time I hear about a book that kmay be one I would love to have, I check my library catalog online and about 90% of the time, they have it! So I reserve it online and they notify me when they have pulled it for me and I just go into reserve section and check it out! Time and money saver!
Our chickens are still producing 4 dozen eggs/ week so at any given time, I have over 20 dozen in my fridge! They have been a wonderful addition to our pantry. The eggs are large to jumbo size and we always have people who are happy to buy eggs from us! The egg sales pay for our feed, so it’s like the eggs that we use are free! And no salmonella scare or recall with them!
I tried some new recipes in the crockpot and the instant pot which were definite “repeaters”!
Through egg sales, eBay, our HandmadeinOldeTowne business and also my “zeroing-out” our checking account at the start of the new pay period, I was able to add an extra $500 to our savings account and $500 off one of our last 3 debts! Whatever the “extra” income those things add up to, I split 50/50 and use for building up savings/paying down debt! I do it as it comes in, so my accounts may show $2.50 activity in each one day for egg sales or some other odd amounts, but I can tell you that those really add up!! Our savings account has never been this high and we see the debt continue to decrease!
All in all. A very good week!!