Happy Sunday everyone. What did you do to renew your spirit today? It's time to share with you this weeks happenings and ways that worked to save our family money.
* I purchased flea medication from the vet's office instead of online and got 1 tube free (did you know that if you purchase Frontline from a veterinarian's office and if you somehow still end up with fleas in your home they will pay for Terminix to come out and treat the flea problem?)
* We made Dove body wash and filled two 24 ounce bottles from 3 bars of soap. I bascially paid 3.50 for two bottles that would have normally cost 5.50 each at the store.
* Made home made furniture polish with a recipe from Pinterest.
* I had a 10.00 coupon from Build a Bear and I used it to purchase my son a Christmas gift so in the end I only paid 2.50 for the gift.
* We combined errands on our day off and ended up visiting grandma....We accepted a walmart bag full of clothes for my daughter, a princess sleeping bag that will now become the comforter for her bed, 1 toy, and a kids tent for my son that they have set up in our great room and are playing inside of as I type.
* We also browsed a Wal mart for after halloween sales and I got the kids a stocking stuffer and paid .25 for each item.
We also hosted our daughters 3rd birthday party.
We probably had approximately 30 people or so in our home...we kept the food simple, hot dogs, chips, koolaid, and cake and icecream of course. Lets say the food cost maybe 30.00 but we fed all those people and even took left overs to neighbors to bless them with dinner. The food cost included everything but the ice cream....Mr. B brought that for me. We had a blast! We had a fire in our outside fire place. We didn't do any decorating though, but no one noticed we showed the movie that was the theme of the party on our tv in the great room, and for favors we gave out sunglasses and beach balls that I purchased from Oriental trading....we spent 20.00 but I waited to order until they offered free shipping.
The cake was made by a friend....we went for a beach theme and it was decorated with teddy grahams, life savers, and graham crackers to make the sand.....it was so much less expensive than any store bought cake and tasted better too.....we had so much fun.
Oh and my photo plans had bombed during our anniversary weekend due to rainy weather but we had cleaned up our yard for the party so we did an at home photo shoot....Aunti P took the pics for me and here is one unedited
I plan to use free online editing software that I found out about from another blogger over at
http://fromnature-tonurture.blogspot.com/ called pic monkey. During our photo shoot I also snapped this current years picture of the birthday girl for her side of the wall, and we took a photo of our son too that will go on his side of the wall in our play room. We didn't buy school pictures.
It was a great week. I plan to share more about this weekend in a special post later this week. Please share you accomplishments!
Sorry to be so long in responding. Your pictures are sweet and looks like all the kids enjoyed the birthday party. You had a house full. I was gone on vacation to the Smoky Mountains last week, just the two of us. We have a timeshare. The condo has a small kitchen. To be thrifty and stretch our budget for the trip, we cooked two meals a day there, usually breakfast and supper, and ate lunch out. Lunch is usually cheaper, and we were out and about anyway. Hubby worked a lot of the time we were gone. We made customer stops coming and going, but he still got to relax. We got some Christmas shopping done, and I took lots of pictures at The Christmas Place for ideas in decorating my own trees at home. I have one up already, I am running behind for me. As for frugal accomplishments this week, I spent some money, but I felt like it was in a frugal manner. I think being frugal isn't always just simply not spending. You have to spend wisely. I organized my coupon bag and made my list with the Kroger sale paper. I went Monday and got 120 items for $104. I only bought sale items, used every coupon that I could that went with those sale items. And they also offer double coupons up to 50 cents. I have a good stockpile of useful items. I have to do more decorating with all the items I gathered using things I have or things I can make myself. Take care, and have a good weekend.
ReplyDeleteSounds like your vacation was nice! I agree with you that frugal it isn't always about not spending but spending wisely, I have been thinking about that alot lately. I am sure your decorations must be lovely. I don't enjoy decorating as much but we will do it Thanksgiving weekend while my son has his long weekend. We did have a good time at the party.I still have to get my house completely back in order though, I have been lazy and we had some unexpected things going on. I think we have mostly wrapped up buying the items we wanted to get from a store. The next thing for us will be getting to putting the home made touches on what we bought etc and getting our projects done, but we have an impromptu extended family thanksgiving dinner to attend this weekend, a birthday for Aunti P to prepare for and I got placed back on wedding prep (just a little) so i need to get to using my time wisely and get some stuff done. It is always good to hear from you Vicky. I always look forward to it
ReplyDeleteAfter re-reading I realized my thoughts got kind of jumbled ther at the end. My "Kroger haul" was of course all grocery items for my pantry stockpile. I meant to say I have to finish decorating with all the "ideas" I had gathered. I love to decorate for Christmas. I try to do something a little different each year, buying only the minimum amount of anything new. Usually maybe only some ribbon or some such. My students usually bless me with a few new ornaments each year, and I do buy a new dated ornament every year since we got married. I hope you enjoy your early thanksgiving dinner this weekend.
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