* Made raspberry and white chocolate muffins using raspberries we grew last Summer.
* Made a batch of soap with olive oil and coconut oil. It's hardened pretty quickly so as soon as I try it I'll let you all know if it's a good one. I'll post the recipe in the next couple of months.
* Sold soup, muffins and mini quiches to a cleaning client. She was most grateful for the goodies due to her life being super busy looking after her extended family.
* Bought a large tray of sausages marked down by 20%. I bag the sausages up into meal sizes so nothing is wasted.
* Redeemed a $20 voucher for the kitchen shop called House. I put it towards a candy thermometer for soap making ( hot process ) and a small frypan marked down from $70 to $20.
* Gratefully received a bag of lemons.
* Darren and I attended a free movie night at our church last weekend. We saw the movie I Can Only Imagine. If you get the chance to watch it please do. It's based on a true story about forgiveness.
* Used the door snake and closed the curtain when the temperature dropped and the winds picked up. Every little bit helps to keep our energy usage down.
* Saved the shower warm up water, drink bottle water and washing machine water to reuse where we could.
* Planted lettuce seedlings in the veggie garden.
* Fed the compost bins with kitchen scraps.
* This week's op shop finds - a white lamp shade for $2.99, a study stainless steel potato masher and slotted spoon for $2.99 together and Royal Albert melamine plates ( new ) 2 for $2.99. I like to pop in once a week because I never know what I'll find.
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| Olive oil and coconut oil soap |
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| Raspberry and white chocolate muffins |
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| Mini quiches |
Those mini quiches look delicious! I'm going to make some like that for my son's lunches this year. It's a good way to pack some extra veggies in his lunch. :) Your soap is lovely, too!
ReplyDeleteYour soaps are gorgeous! I really want to learn to make it so I'll wait and see your recipe. I'm pretty intimidated by the whole thing!
ReplyDeleteThe food looks delicious, too. I'm looking forward to Autumn to get my cooking urge back. Our kitchen faces southwest and is unbearable on summer afternoons. I'd rather eat celery every day than be in there!
My best way of saving money this week was to cancel an insurance policy that we no longer need. An extra $100 per month. Yay!!
My frugal “project” for the week was to try to be very vigilant about not wasting any resources, be it money, water, electricity, food, gasoline or whatever. It is sometimes easy to become careless as life gets busy. Next week I want to concentrate on not wasting time. Anne
ReplyDeleteHi Wendy and you did so well and your cooking and soap making all look divine and how wonderful you were able to have a free movie date night with your husband :).
ReplyDeleteOur Vicky challenge added up to $154.49 in savings and earnings this week :).
Here is what we did to save, build our pantry and accomplished -
Finances & earnings -
- Listed 10 more handmade items on eBay using a free listing promotion saving $16.50 in usual listing fees.
- Made $65.20 from the sale of 1 5 layer cotton eye mask, a homemade triple layer table runner & 100 stems of dried English lavender stems picked and dried from the gardens.
- Banked more money into home deposit savings account bringing us to 28.04% of the way there.
In the kitchen -
- Made 2.8 kg of honey, almond, coconut and sultana granola from food storage for $8.55 saving $28.69 over purchasing the same amount in the supermarkets in equivalent quality and ingredients.
Pantry stock ups-
- Topped up on special saving an additional $29 on normal prices on 2 x 400 ml cocoa moisturiser, 6 x vanilla beans, 1 pkt of coffee filters for filtering vanilla extract, 12 pkts of 100 g smoked oysters, 6 x 250 g pkts of cracker biscuits, 8 x 100g pkts of twisties for snacks, 2 x 375 g pkts of dried chick peas, 18 x 250 g pkts of baking chocolate chips. The savings included specials and redeeming a $10 supermarket rewards voucher for buying our normal groceries.
- Purchased 10 punnets of 250 g strawberries for 0.95c per punnet combining specials and a further 5% off using our roadside assist gift card discount saving $15.50 on usual prices. Today we will be washing, chopping or halving and freezing them for future batches of jam and some for desserts and lunches too.
Home organisation -
- Went under the house and did a stocktake on all the firewood we have to see if we had enough for winter this year and next and we will need to cut more while it is cool. We re stacked it from small to large. Interesting experiment as we are both tall and the cottage is 2'6" off the ground and we are both tall so our legs were getting tangled up and we were pulling ourselves out from under there, quite amusing :) but we got it done.
- Tackled organising the 3 bay machinery garage as we just threw things in there when we moved. Took everything out and pressure cleaned the shed, garden equipment, BBQ and smoker, wiped over shelving units, fuel containers and put it all back again. Speaking of spiders, eek, there was a heap of Redback spiders and egg sacks we blasted into oblivion with the pressure cleaner as no way I am touching those even with thick leather gloves on. Still have the boxes of power tools and bits and pieces to sort and box in an organised fashion next week to finish it off. This will help us when we move having everything boxed, organised and labelled too.
- Did our 3 monthly grocery shop using 2 of our $240 for $200 e-vouchers and dated, rotated and put everything away. While we were at it we re-organised the food storage pantry room so we have more room on the gorilla shelves to stock up on more food. It is amazing with a bit of re-organisation how much more you can fit into a small space.
Have to say we are both sore and worn out after this week but it was worth it to see the results of everything looking clean and organised :).
Hope everyone has a wonderful week ahead :).
Sewingcreations15 (Lorna)
Gosh, those mini quiches look so good. Here in the UK, summer is winding down and some mornings the damp is in full swing. In a few weeks, Autumn will truly be here, my favourite time of year.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you had a great week. The quiches looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteToday, at the produce market, I was able to buy 5 five pound bags of chopped onions for $1/bag! So for a total of $5, I got 25 pounds of fresh chopped onions all ready to dehydrate, freeze or use fresh without any prep work!!! The first 10 pounds are in my dehydrator right now! I had been getting lower on my supply of dehydrated onions, so this is perfect timing!!!
ReplyDeleteI noticed a couple months ago that there was a volunteer tomato plant growing on the outside wall of the chicken coop. I just ignored it. Well, it grew into a couple huge tomato plants that were using the sides of the coop as supports! Today, I picked the first 4 lovely Roma tomatoes from them and saw that there are literally dozens of big green Roma tomatoes just waiting to ripen! What a fun surprise!!
The chickens are still giving us about 3-1/2 dozen eggs a week! And my raspberry bushes are starting their second crop of the season! I get them in the beginning of summer and then again just before fall! Yum!!
I pulled out 5 pound boneless pork loin and slow cooked it in the crockpot to add BBQ sauce to for BBQ pulled pork sandwiches which we enjoyed for dinner and have had as lunches and leftovers!
The scrappy bag that I made using a free online tutorial got modified and I made a couple different sizes than the original and a couple friends have now ordered 5 bags from me so that will be an unexpected little stream of money coming in this week! With that encouragement, I will make up more and list them on my Facebook business page for sale and see what happens!
A friend who is DIY-ing at her house to prepare it for sale asked if anyone would cut her baseboards because her miter saw had died. We offered as friends to do it and she insisted on bringing dinner and dessert over to us as a thank you plus she gave us oak trim that we will use for another project!
I just love being able to barter!
We met with a financial analyst at work to see if we are prepared adequately to retire in May! I’ve done the worksheets and it looked quite do-able but I didn’t want any surprises when we make this change! The calculations I made were spot on and in fact, she told us a couple things we could do now that would be beneficial that we didn’t know about but are simple!
Hope everyone else is having a frugal week!
-gardenpat (Pat)
Great list Wendy.
ReplyDeleteWe have been blessed with a lot of rain overnight. I'm hoping it filled out water tank.
This week we cooked everything from scratch, only bought groceries and fuel. So glad we have been frugal as our son needs braces and we can pay without credit. Yay!
Your quiches look very tasty. Can I ask which baking pan you use for these? Is it a patty cake pan?
Have a great week.
Rachel :)
the warmer weather means I can spend a bit more time in the garden. This year I have added blackberry and raspberry canes, 30 more strawberry plants. I have started some seeds today in mini hothouses tomatoes, zucchinis, capsicum. Next weekend the spring onions, carrots, beetroot will get started. I have really worked on soil improvement over the summer so heres hoping.
ReplyDeleteAugust has turned into a horrible month for me I had organised a 2 week vacation My mum refused to go in for respite care so stayed with a niece. I was seeing a friend for a few days in the country when I called her she said she wasn't well sadly she passed the next day. I had to put our cat to sleep then I was planning a 3 day stay in a hotel in the city so excited. Then on the day I was leaving news that mum was at the hospital as she had a fall. Im sorry I still went away. Home planning another visit to another friend when I get a call Mums sister is dying when will I be home. I went away as planned. Instead of my family helping to get mum into respite care they had to interfere and as its the only time away from mum I was very disappointed.
Some good savings this week had $13 credit at Priceline which I was happy to spend. Its the first time I had a $!0 birthday bonus.
Had my online Coles delivery this week. Watched the driver drop some of my order. 5 broken eggs and the orange juice leaked everywhere. Called Coles and they gave me credit for the items and an extra $15 as I was inconvenienced by having to wash the items the juice had spilt over. Bought some bargains at Safeway and did some online Christmas shopping as theres only 8 pays until Christmas!
Have a wonderful week ahead friemds..Leanne