Here's what else I got up to this week -
* Sold a bottle of Miracle Spray to a cleaning client.
* Took baking, spag bol, snacks, fruit and veggies from home to help with our holiday grocery costs.
* Used our saved Flybuy dollars to buy extra groceries at Coles while we were away.
* Bought tickets to Sovereign Hill from RACV at a discounted price.
* Gratefully received some lemons from a friend.
* Baked four loaves of wholemeal bread with extra goodness.
* Made a bottle of room spray using cooled boiled water and essential oil.
* Fed the compost bins with lots of kitchen scraps.
* Made a big saucepan full of veggie soup using sad, wilting veggies from the fridge crisper. I included cauliflower and broccoli stalks which I cut up into small cubes. Once the soup had cooked I used the stick blender to puree it.
* Bought an AFL ( football ) mug at half price in Coles. This will be given as a Christmas present.
* Cheap main meals we ate this week were - fried rice and soup with crusty bread.
* Bought a cooked chicken while in Ballarat and used it to make our lunches for three days while we were out and about. This $10 chicken saved us approximately $40 on lunch costs. We took water bottles everywhere we went which saved us another $30 +
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| Hearty vegetable soup. |
Sorry I'm short on photos this week. I've been busy enjoying life.
Wendy I am glad you got away for a mini holiday it does the heart good to relax and enjoy new surroundings. You are right it is so much cheaper to make your own lunches etc while away from home as takeaway is so expensive and you got a lot accomplished too at home.
ReplyDeleteJust a brief catch up of last weeks going on's here as I was busy and didn't comment is that I found chicken drumsticks on special for $3 kg at IGA and topped up with 11.71 kg so the chicken freezer drawer is full. I painted the wall, side of the kitchen unit with sink, and ply we had filled in the hole with as the vinyl on boarding was higher around the outside costing happily nothing to do apart from a bit of time and effort.
Our savings last week added up to $860.26 -
Listings/Finances/Purchases -
- Listed 12 items on a free listing and reduced final auction value free promotion on eBay saving $19.80 on usual prices.
- Got 2 quotes to do some electrical work done one came in at $1300 and the other $602.66 to do the same thing so of course we went for option B saving a whopping $697.34. They will be out here doing the work not this coming week but early the following week. So hard to get quotes when you live more rurally it seems.
- Put an additional bulk sum of money into savings as we are trying to get our emergency kitty up to a 3 months of living expenses level for additional piece of mind.
- We are currently almost doubling paying off our home mortgage repayments since the beginning of the year.
- On clearance sale in Target I purchased a skirt and a pair of shorts for $6 in total new saving $54 on usual costs. They are clearing all their clothing to make way for more high end clothing from what I read in news articles.
In the kitchen -
- Made a homemade batch of chocolate fudge (including condensed milk), a quadruple batch of chocolate pudding (similar to yogo) and a double batch of Anzac biscuits saving $89.12 over buying them in the shops including what it cost us to make them taken off.
In the gardens -
- In two separate garden beds we planted sprouted seed potatoes from some we hadn't eaten from the supermarket and in another garden bed planted turnip and carrot seeds.
- Last night we had 6.5 mm of rain plus more in the afternoon which topped up our two header rainwater tanks and overflowed into our lower 5000 gallon one filling it by another third. We have more rain predicted for this afternoon and tonight so we are hoping it totally fills our bottom tank back up.
- DH has been working gradually during the week at the back of the property to cut up fallen branches from ironbark trees. Yesterday we filled so far 2 large wheelbarrows full and stacked them in the firewood leanto shed. This should give us ample kindling and more medium sized logs but there are still yet more to cut. Got to love not leaving your property to cut firewood.
Hope everyone has had a wonderful week and will this coming week too :).
Sewingcreations15 (Lorna).
It sounds like you have made the most of your time away without busting the budget. My last few days have been expensive but I do have some meat to set aside for either my eldest and youngest's birthdays in a few days time. They are on the same day so I do need to be organised. If they don't want a roast lamb dinner I will save it for Christmas. Otherwise we have putzed along doing the usual things.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you had a lovely break away, Wendy. Panning for gold would have been fun! We always book self-contained places if we go on holiday because it's so much cheaper than having to eat out all the time or get takeaways. At our place this week:
ReplyDelete* planned week's meals around meat already in freezer and found I only needed to purchase bacon rashers extra this week
* previewed supermarket catalogues before shopping and added 6 x boxes tissues to my bathroom stockpile (half price) and packets of choc-chips at $2.09.
* bought 2L of organic full-cream milk marked down to $1.13 (almost reached use by date) and used this to make homemade ice-cream and in sauce for mac 'n' cheese.
* made Jamie Oliver's green mac 'n' cheese using leeks and thyme from our garden, stalks of some broccolini and handfuls of baby spinach. Made enough for leftovers following night.
* picked lettuce, cherry toms and a little handful of mulberries from our garden. I am going to use mulberries in an apple and mulberry pie.
* bought a $3 vase and a $8 Country Road skirt from local op-shop.
* picked beautiful pale yellow clivia lily from our own garden for our table
* borrowed several books and two dvd series from library to enjoy over school holidays
* potted up cutting from my Mum's garden into pots and a hanging basket I already had.
I hope you have a lovely week, Wendy. Your list always inspires me to think about the things we do here to keep our costs down. Meg:)
Glad you got in a break. Thanks for the tip re Coles flybuys. I have started saving my points for a holiday early next year. So far I've saved about a week's worth of points. This week I've been planting carrot tops,coaxing celery seedlings to life, trying to put my hand maidens to use during the day while at work to reduce power costs (we have solar) . Easy cheap meals this week have been savoury and chocolate congee. So easy to prep in the slow cooker and makes a cup of rice stretch a long way. Thinking that I may just bring the slow cooker with me on holidays to simplify meals and give me some more down time. Keen to Know if others have done this.
ReplyDeleteSounds like your Mini break was a treat Wendy, well deserved and planned for. Good on you and back with recharged batteries.
ReplyDeleteYour veggie soup is an “ah ha” moment!!!
Why have I never thought of using up wilted veggies this way! Did you just cook veggies and stock? Did you add pearl barley or lentils etc? Sounds like this will become a regular in my house. I love soup any time of year.
We travel regularly 5.5hrs between our home and our daughters. I always take crackers, fruit and a thermos of tea and water and it literally has saved us a fortune over the years. I purchased two double walled metal drink bottles from Spotlight on sale and they are brilliant. Don’t waste your money on the Kmart cheapies. I’m sure I’ll still have these in 10 years time. I also have a good Keep Cup to take my cup of tea as I head out from home for my trips, another money saver.
I collect bottles and cans from family and cash in and so far have made $50!! I don’t buy fizzy drink or water so great to get theirs and make some money and do my bit for the environment.
I did all home cooking as usual, no takeaway for us.
I bought some plants- lettuce, tomato, capsicum, baby spinach and dwarf beans to make a mini veggie garden. I’m going to try so hard to nurture them as we live in drought country and very harsh sun and temperatures. I can just taste those home grown tomatoes on toast! Mmmmm!
All our scraps went to the compost bin or farm animals and like you Wendy I cook meals and freeze leftovers. I cooked a lemon coconut slice for a funeral we catered for- I joined the CWA and what a wonderful group of ladies they are! They have made me so welcome and are doing a sterling job with supporting farmers and families during this terrible drought.
I also saw a story on TV about the drought affecting honey production. It’s about to become scarce and skyrocket in price so stock up ladies as it will last for years.
This week I was gifted a cabbage, cauliflower, mandarins, carrots and 24 bottles of water!! What a bounty of goodness. All through generous, kind people supporting drought affected farmers. The water was wonderful as we are relying totally on bore water so to have pure water to drink is delicious!
Have a happy, fruitful week Wendy. Best wishes, Lorraine xx
Lorraine, the soup was cut up wilted veggies, soup mix ( barley, lentils etc ), stock powder added at the end with dried onion flakes and parsley.
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