Here's what I managed to fit in when I found a few spare minutes -
* Sold two dozen eggs.
* Used recycled bread bags to line the bathroom bins.
* Planted bean, cucumber and lettuce seeds as well as bean seedlings I'd grown.
* Dried the washing on the line and clothes horses.
* Saved shower warm up water, drink bottle water and washing machine rinse water and reused it all around the house and garden where I could.
* Picked silverbeet for two meals.
* Filled up on petrol when I heard it was going up. It hasn't risen yet so I'll keep topping up every few days.
* Gratefully received six daisy plants and one cherry tomato plant from my Dad. My Dad has a beautiful display of daisies in his front garden. There are quite a few different colors and the plants have been throwing seedlings that Dad has been digging up and potting. He's got quite a nursery going under his pergola.
* Hand washed the dishes most nights.
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| We'll start picking lettuce next week |
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| The raspberry plants are growing rapidly |
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| The tomato plants we grow each year. |
Hi
ReplyDeleteYour raspberries look great. What variety do you grow?
I'm not sure. I bought them from Bunnings in 2014
DeleteYou might not have had time to be extremely frugal, Wendy, but you certainly still did a lot! I have been busy relief teaching this week but did manage some frugal things around here:
ReplyDelete* finished sewing up a skirt with fabric from my stash. Just had to buy a zip.
* made a tiny little felt brooch from a snippet of old linen and scraps of felt as a thank you gift for a lovely lady who gave me some of her old linens.
* planted up little succulents, that a friend gave me, into my son's old and tiny wheelbarrow.
* made choc chip cookies and a crumble cake for school lunchboxes.
* made minestrone soup and we had this for dinner and two lunches during the week.
* picked lettuce and spring onion from garden for fajitas we had for dinner.
* filled up car at $1.58per L when everywhere else it was $1.67 per L (at least).
* dried washing on racks inside as we had very rainy days.
* saved $27.90 shopping specials, mostly items for my stockpile.
This weekend, which is a long one here because of a pupil free day at school on Monday, I plan to do some baking and gardening and sewing. I want to make some hand sewn ornaments, with fabric I already have, little Xmas trees that have little cinnamon stick trunks. Have a really happy weekend, Wendy! Meg:)
You had a wonderful week Meg. Do you have any plans for the old linens ? Also, are you on Facebook ? I'd love to see the things you make .
DeleteHi Wendy. I am not on Facebook but I do have a blog. I sometimes write a post about what I have made. Meg:)
DeleteMeg, you are more than welcome to share your blog name here. We'd love to see your photos.
DeleteWe had a few days of much needed, beautiful rain. I stayed inside and did the regular cleaning and then got stuck into some sewing. I added to the Grandies growing pile of gifts by making little girl hanbags and for the little man I made a messenger bag and pencil case. These gifts were made from recycled and left over fabrics.
ReplyDeleteIn the garden I spread out the self sown seedlings. I took some of the old seedheads and saved the heirloom seeds- spring onions, bak choy, Lazy Housewife Beans and Corriander. I pulled up two tomato weedlings from my paving and have relocated them to the veg garden. I have potted up two Acerola Cherry Trees I found growing under the big tree. Parsley, basil and corriander weedlings have been potted and will be given as gifts for Christmas.
Have a lovely weekend.
I like your term ' weedlings '. We have either zucchini or cucumber weedlings growing in the veg patch. I'm waiting to see what they are before I decide to let them stay or full them out.
DeleteYou've saved a fair bit of money by giving the weedlings as presents too.
I find myself doing more frugal things and I don't think of it as frugal. I think of it as normal. At present I trying to reduce my waste, especially plastic waste. That stuff is everywhere.
ReplyDeleteWe have reduced our plastic waste too. I'm recycling the soft plastic to Redcycle at Coles.
DeleteHi Wendy and you did a lot despite the fact you were so busy with work :). What a blessing to be given some free plants for your garden and you were able to pick some produce as well from the gardens.
ReplyDeleteFantastic news here is that we got our unconditional home loan from the bank and we will put down a 36.85% deposit on it from money we had saved. The owners had the home on the market for some time and then reduced the price by $50 000 as they had no lookers on it at all. Of course we jumped on it and organised an inspection straight away since similar properties in the area on slightly smaller 1 acre blocks of land were selling for $230 000. We paid under $200 000 for it and our home is on 1.21 acres of land so I have to say that it was a true steal at the price we purchased it for :). Our settlement is on the 10th of December and we will be moving soon afterwards into our forever home.
As would be expected not a lot got done again this week with running backwards and forwards to the solicitor's office, buying a new to us second car, organising surveyors and pest and building inspections.
Our savings last week added up to $7829.75 :).
General house buying madness -
- Went happily crackers filling out lots of forms for the house, new car and getting quotes on house, contents and car insurance.
Finances/ listings/car purchase/land surveying -
- Listed 15 items on eBay using a free listing promotion saving $24.75 on usual listing fees.
- Negotiated an offer to buy our home and saved $7000 on the listed purchase price.
- DH did his negotiating and managed to save another $255 on land surveying and pest and building inspection previously quoted prices.
- We purchased a new to us Ford Territory as we are going to be out of town on roads with kangaroos and for towing firewood and manures with. I negotiated the price down by $550 on the listed price in the car yard.
Home organisation for moving -
- Broke down the old falling apart wardrobes and took 3 shelving units and some heart swags I made to the Endeavour shop for a donation and took the broken down wardrobes to the tip for disposal. We had replaced the old shelves with new shelves a couple of weeks ago and this will give us less to move.
In the gardens -
- Weeded all the front garden beds, pruned grape vines and mulched all garden beds with saved dried grass clippings and dried leaves from the yard to save on Lucerne prices and to use up the lawn clippings here.
- Picked lots of English lavender from the gardens to dry for sale on the internet and some for the home.
In the kitchen -
- Cooked all meals and bread from scratch.
Hope everyone has a wonderful week ahead :).
Sewingcreations15 (Lorna).
So excited for you Lorna! Your hard work and perseverance has made off! I have been following your savings journey for a while. I look forward to reading updates as you move forward and settle into your new home. Many blessings to you and yours.
DeletePatricia Fl/USA
Congratulations Lorna on your forever home. How exciting for you both. Bet you can't wait to move in and set up home. I hope it all goes smoothly and everything is in place so you can enjoy Christmas
DeleteThank you Patricia for your encouragement and you are right all our perseverance has paid off indeed:).
DeleteThank you also Wendy for your encouragement too. We have planned ahead and have today put in the bills account the amount for our rates, water and car rego coming up in the beginning of year. This will enable us to just concentrate on setting up our home and gardens without worrying about anything and hopefully it will all run smoothly for us.
Sewingcreations15.
I love reading your blog, as your season's are opposite mine and I can feel spring through you.
ReplyDeleteIt's the same for me when all the America readers tell me about their seasonal activities.
DeleteCongratulations, Lorna, on your home buying! You have been so patient and persistent in saving up for it and you have inspired us all!
ReplyDeleteWendy, as busy as your week has been, it’s always interesting to see how mainly “routine” things you do every day that are frugal as well as not the norm for most of today’s families as like minded people, we, your followers, nod our heads and recognize similar things we do that are frugal! But many of them are foreign to those around us! So, dont discount the routine things that you do!
This week, all of our meals have been at home and from scratch! I made a fresh Blender salsa using ingredients already here to use up some ingredients that I wanted to rotate out of my freezer- onions and peppers. I ended up making (3) 48 ounce pickle jars worth of salsa to put in fridge. The recipe says it will last for 4 weeks in the fridge but seeing my guys enjoying it yesterday, I’m not sure it will even make it 2 weeks!! Lol!!! I’m thinking that if I bought that much salsa, it would have been about $20!!
I sold some more Scrappy Bags and reusable flannel “Softies” (Kleenex substitute) and divided the profit evenly between savings and paying down hospital bill! It’s amazing to see how these little bits really start adding up over a month!
Tomorrow will be busy with 3 drawstring bags being picked up and paid for by one customer, a set of 3 pallet wood pumpkins being picked up and paid for by another and 2 sets of wooden Noel letter cutouts being picked up and paid for by a third! Little by little, extra streams of income show up!
The chickens keep blessing us with eggs and we have not had to buy an egg from the store for over 18 months and yet we’ve never run out!
Washed and reused more ziploc bags. Kept eating from our pantry and freezer! I made more pumpkin muffins and banana muffins using frozen ziplocs of pumpkin and banana! Enjoyed by all and made more space in freezer!
Made more brown sugar, Ranch dressing mix, cookie mix and Italian dressing mix.
Mostly routine decluttering and rotating food storage and getting everything more organized!
Congratulations on your new home. Don't forget to pot up some of your lavender to transplant once you move. If you do it now, they will be adjusted to the pots and ready to move when the day comes.
ReplyDeleteIts been a good week so far here.
ReplyDeleteI did an extra night shift at work.
Purchased some Christmas presents for only a few dollars.
I got a free bottle of Pepsi as a fly by offer.
Made mum some snacks (small containers of jelly) over buying them im going to cut up some peaches and apricots next, works out so much cheaper.
Dried bread crusts out and made breadcrumbs, saved some glass jars for the herbs im planning on drying, put buckets out in drip areas when it rained caught enough water to last a few days of watering. I took my paper bag back to Priceline to reuse the staff was so impressed she gave me some free skin samples. Cooked our meals from scratch, made herbal teas to drink cold, im doing product testing cant say what, but its saving me money, the garden is coming on nicely and I was grateful to receive a huge bag of mixed cat foods from a friend whos cat passed away. and I saved a bit of money this week. Hope everyone is enjoying our weather. Leanne
I think you had a great week. I also have been working more then usual. This is when I count on all of those meals in my freezer. Easy dinners. My list is here:https://mcoia.blogspot.com/2018/10/my-frugal-list-week-of-october-15-2018.html
ReplyDeleteI think you still did many things. Certainly it's more than I did. This month I was able to eat on my own every day. This meant no breakfasts and lunches bought at work. It is huge for me because I'm terrible at saving and meal prepping. But I did it and I'm sooo proud of myself!
ReplyDeleteMaddie // aws advanced consulting partner