Here's how I saved money this week -
* Gratefully received some delicious mandarins from a friend's tree.
* Made a few baby cards with supplies I had on hand. They will be put into baby packages to sell in my blog shop.
* Gratefully received a gift card to replace a packet of biscuits that were damaged. I contacted the company to let them know about the damaged biscuits which resulted in them discovering a fault in their production line. With the gift card I was able to buy 2 packets of biscuits.
* Darren filled up our cars with petrol at $1.33 just as the price jumped to $1.59.
* Closed the curtains on dreary overcast days and kept them open when the sun was shining. This helped the house temperature to stay at 18 degrees Celsius most days without the heater on.
* Bought two legs of lamb at $7.99 kg. Lamb doesn't seem to get much cheaper than this.
* Did some ironing for a cleaning client that earned myself some extra money.
* Fed the compost bins with kitchen scraps and tea leaves.
* Redeemed $10 worth of Flybuys points onto our card. We are saving the money for our next holiday so we can buy our groceries for free.
* Gratefully received lots of bread bags. Some have been used to line the bathroom bins, some were used for wrapping food for the freezer and others were used to store soft plastics to recycle.
* Dried the washing in the bathrooms over the ducted heating vents. Only the sheets went into the dryer.
* Signed up to the NBN with a cheaper monthly deal than what we usually pay for the internet.
* Ate leftovers from the freezer a couple of nights for dinner.
* Took soup from home on the days I had lots of cleaning work.
* Redeemed $40 worth of Coles vouchers for doing surveys.
 |
| Gifted mandarins |
 |
| Princess snuggling Jessica's teddy bear. |
 |
| Baby card I made |
 |
| Damaged biscuits. Some of the others were broken too. |
I think we should get rid of bread bags and come up with ideas for bin liners otherwise it defeats the purpose of plastic shopping bags etc. All plastic is a menace to the environment. I read where a large bin was being lined with a pillowcase and then washed. some people use newspapers but to me most of us read papers on line. Help !
ReplyDelete" Margie In Miami "
I agree although the bread bags I receive are rescued from going in the bin at a café.
DeleteBeautiful card! Did you save the crushed cookies for ice cream topping?
ReplyDeleteI still ate them but couldn't put the damaged ones out when I had visitors. I bought them because my visitor is going through chemo and can only taste lemon.
DeleteHi everyone, Liz here, I'm always impressed Wendy with how much you achieve in a week.
ReplyDeleteA quiet week here after putting youngest DS on the bus back to Ag College. I have my eldest DS staying while on Annual Leave from work.
I stayed away from the shops this week except for a planned trip yesterday when I bundled all my tasks into the one trip to town. Only had to top up milk, potatoes and sweet potato, otherwise my monthly shop is providing well.
The car broke down not once but 3 times whilst in town, and dispite breaking down next to a mechanic shop on one occasion, I fixed it myself and got it started. Hubby will repair the problem himself today!
Banked my coin jar ($61.15c) into the Investment property loan.
Ordered a repeat script I needed over the phone with the Dr Surgery, rather than pay for an appointment.
Had the fire going 24/7 but free wood, dries the washing and heats the hot water.
Cooked all meals from scratch using home grown meat, veggies, eggs and bottled produce from the summer garden as much as possible.
Asked hubby to print off tax documents at work rather than replace the ink in the printer.
Put another home brew beer on to brew!
Entertained myself with a book on my Kindle that I had forgotten I had bought a year ago, bonus!
Feeling very blessed this week as hubby received a major promotion at work and with it a great pay rise, perfect timing for us. Best wishes everyone, regards Liz
Your baby card looks great, Wendy! I filled up before the petrol price hike too thankfully. Other thrifty stuff here this week:
ReplyDelete* learnt how to make a simple pattern, from a favourite skirt, at a course in at a local community centre. The course was a gift for my birthday back in June.
* chose two fabrics from community centre haberdashery, at cost of less than $10, to make up skirt to 'test' my pattern.
* soup & lasagna from freezer + other simple homemade meals this week
* made pasta and pesto for lunches twice this week when we had no leftovers
* took picnic lunch and snacks to son's sports day + water bottles from home
* baked chocolate chip cookies from dough I had in freezer
* eating porridge regularly for breakfast - cheap, warm and filling!
* borrowed lots of books from library to read over next few weeks
* found a pair of school shorts (near new) for $3, a fleecy lined jacket for $7 for my son from op-shop.
Have a lovely weekend, Wendy! Meg:)
This week I decided to use up more of my fabric scraps and made two quilts- this one is all flannel scraps and quilted with a variegated thread- https://pin.it/ibert64t36jy3b The other one is a simple one from a free online pattern just using rectangles that were cotton scraps . I had a twin size 100% cotton sheet from the thrift store that I was able to use as backing for both quilts. The thrift store tag still said 99 cents! Well spent for 2 backings!! https://pin.it/rxypxbuxbodput
ReplyDeleteMy garden is still gifting me with cucumbers and zucchini and so I shredded some zucchini and used up some over-ripe bananas to make 3 loaves of very tasty chocolate chip zucchini banana bread! Here’s the recipe: https://pin.it/liwqhd5tg4a6h7 Great use-it-up recipe!!!
I cooked, packaged and froze about 25 pounds of ground beef so I can have the convenience of pulling them out as a recipe timesaver! I also made 3-1/2 pounds of ground beef into hero-burger mix. We made up half for dinner (and lunch leftovers) and packaged the rest in a gallon ziploc bag to have ready in the freezer.
We drove 400 miles each way on Friday/Saturday to our daughter’s to attend a grandson’s baptism. Our 13 year old car performed like a champ (just like it had the previous weekend when we drove 700 miles round trip to my sister’s!!) with a little planning, I was able to make ham,Turkey, cheese wraps to put in the cooler of ice along with bottled water and cheese cubes and banana bread for the trip and then had butterscotch chip banana oatmeal cookies and a mix of raw almonds and craisins to snack on too!! Doing this meant that we didn’t need to stop for food at any fast food places, mini-marts or rest stop vending machines which saved us a fortune!! Had enough for the whole round trip!
On Sunday, I had the assignment to visit two out of town congregations so with travel time, I was gone from 9:30 a.m. until 4:45 pm. After traveling the two days before, I was ready to kick back but I got a call asking if I could take dinner to a family at church whose mom just fell on their stairs and was in a lot of pain. Their house was about 10 miles away and the caller asked if I could just take them a freezer meal! I said that on Monday I could take dinner but that day there just wasn’t time to prepare and transport a meal before it was too late for dinner. The caller said she would continue to search for someone else. After I changed clothes, I realized that I have other options besides just freezer meals! So I called her back at 5:15 and said I could have dinner to their house by 6! I got out 2 packages of precooked ground beef, 2 jars of tomatoes, 4 jars of kidney beans, 3 cans of corn and various spices and made Texas style chili- enough for two meals even with the 3 teenagers in the family! I packaged up more of my chocolate chip banana oatmeal cookies and got them there a minute before 6! Not elegant food, but satisfying and tasty and the mom texted me the next morning to express her gratitude! I felt embarrassed that I had initially refused! I am so blessed with our abundant and diverse pantry that makes it possible to “whip up” a meal to take at the very last minute!!
That is the best part of living providently- the ability to take care of our family and also help others!
All I. All, a very good week!
Hi Wendy,i too save the bread bags i have one in the car during the week as iam in the car 24/7 with work,and eat lunch in the car sometimes I like your baby cards i have a friend expecting soon so maybe i need to buy one or 2 as i dont know if its a boy or a girl yet.I was very surprised as to how much tax i got back iam very happy indeed,, and the money will go towards some kind of home deposit,or car have a great week xo
ReplyDeleteHi Wendy. Sorry but this is a bit random. I was talking to some friends today about our upcoming kitchen renos and I mentioned I wanted to have a green splashback and they reminded me about yours which I read about a while back and loved. I was wondering where you got the tiles from and what one would ask for to get the white cupboards like you have. Is the white easy to keep clean? I tried to find an emaill address for you without success. Perhaps if you have a spare moment sometime you could contact me via the contact form on my blog. I am going to go through your reno posts now with a fine toothed comb as we have never had renos done in forty years and I am a bit overwhelmed by colours etc. and am not even sure what to ask the tradies to do but I do like your kitchen. We are having our one and only bathroom done at the same time so I am thinking of going on a holiday. LOL!
ReplyDeleteHi Wendy what a blessing those mandarins are as well as the gift cards for doing surveys.
ReplyDeleteWe also signed up for NBN and chose to pay an extra $10 a month to include free phone calls and phone calls to mobile numbers as we have a lot of friends who are elderly and don't know how to text back so it will come in handy. This will reduce our phone and mobile pre paid bills in the long term as well.
Our savings added up to $428.21 in savings and earnings last week.
Here is how we saved last week -
Earnings -
- Earned $50.40 from the sale of a home made bread bag and 300 g of thyme picked from the gardens and dried in my internet store.
- Earned $3 from the sale for a garden harvested a bunch of silver beet to friends.
Finances -
- Banked more money into our home deposit savings account bringing us to 26.80 % of the way there.
Purchases -
- BigW were have a huge clearance on their winter and some summer clothing with markdowns and a further markdown of 40% off those prices again (18th to the 26th I think) in store. With our following purchases we saved 73.31% or $267 on usual retail prices and stocked both of our wardrobes for a few years to come in winter clothing.
For myself I purchased on special 2 pairs of knitted gloves, 3 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of jeggings, 2 pairs of shaping tights, 1 x 3/4 sleeve lace detail t-shirt, 8 x l/s t-shirts, 3 x 5 pk of cushioned sports socks, 3 x puffer vests, 3 x puffer jackets. For DH we purchased 4 x l/s t-shirts, 1 zip polar fleece jacket, 4 quilted track suit tops, 6 tracksuit tops and 4 x tracksuit pants.
In the gardens -
- Separated out 392 g of thyme picked and dried from the gardens saving $52.68 over purchasing it.
- Picked 21 g of snow peas, 254 g of early Massey shelling peas, 200 g of money maker tomatoes and 2.3 kg of cherry tomatoes from the gardens saving $52.68 over purchasing them in the supermarkets.
- Harvested more French and English lavender to dry from the gardens and separated other dried garden harvested French and English lavender saving $9.68 over purchasing it in the shops.
In the kitchen-
- Cooked all meals and bread from scratch.
Other frugal things we usually do -
- Saved warm up shower water and dish rinsing water to water the fruit tree pot plants on the back veranda, only turned on the electric hot water system when it needed heating, heated the home with free firewood, boiled our kettle most days on top the slow combustion fireplace instead of using the electric kettle, hung washing out to dry on the clothes line and washed out and reused clip seal freezer bags.
Have a wonderful week ahead everyone :).
Sewingcreations15 (Lorna).